Maximum instruction: participants of the Taganskaya organized criminal group were given up to 25 years in a penal colony

Participants of the Taganskaya organized criminal group will spend from 22 to 25 years in a high-security penal colony. On May 12, the Moscow City Court sentenced ten members of Moscow's oldest criminal group to such terms. In their last words, the Taganskys asked the court not to sentence them to the maximum terms requested by the prosecutor. The defendants referred to their age — most of them were over sixty. Earlier, the jury found them guilty of banditry and high-profile murders of businessmen and lawyers. Who the Taganskys are and why they were given such long sentences is in the Izvestia article.

What was the Tagansky convicted for?

On May 12, the Moscow City Court announced the verdict to members of the Taganskaya organized crime group. In March 2025, the jury found ten defendants in the case, including gang leader Igor Zhirnokleev, guilty of banditry, extortion and murders that occurred in the capital in the 90s and 2000s.

The indictment in the case contains almost 3,000 pages. Among the imputed crimes are several episodes of particularly brutal murders: Valery Zhuravlev, CEO of Rospishcheprom, businessmen Armen Avanesov and Alexey Pokrovsky, Andrei Bralyuk, lawyer at the Moscow department store, and Natalia Vavilina, lawyer.

Gang leader Igor Zhirnokleev and his right-hand man Grigory Rabinovich were arrested in January 2019. Rabinovich did not live to see the trial — he died in June 2024 in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center in Moscow from a heart attack. The jury found him guilty posthumously.

The case was submitted to the Moscow City Court in July 2021. The jury was changed three times. Ordinary members of the group were also in the dock. Depending on the role of each, they were charged with banditry, organizing and participating in a criminal community, murder, kidnapping, extortion, robbery, trafficking in weapons and ammunition, illegal manufacture of explosives and weapons, as well as fraud and theft. The court sentenced them to 22 to 25 years in prison.

What kind of terms did Tagansky receive?

The court sentenced Igor Zhirnokleev, the leader of Tagansky, to 25 years in a penal colony. He was found guilty of creating and leading an organized criminal group, complicity in the murder of criminal boss Aslan Usoyan ("Grandfather Hassan") in 2013 and organizing the murder of lawyer Natalia Vavilina in 2017. She was shot dead in the entrance of her house on Altufyevsky Highway when she was returning from work.

Three other members of the group, Oleg Rusanov, Boris Tretyak and Marat Yanbukhtin, received the same terms. The latter had previously been sentenced to 19 years in prison for the murder of Natalia Vavilina.

Yanbukhtin was the owner of a company that leased pavilions near the metro, Izvestia wrote in those years. After the demolition of the stalls, the company was declared bankrupt. Natalia Vavilina had her own Delphi law firm in Moscow, specializing in economic cases. The woman participated in demolition lawsuits on the side of small tenants who tried to get Yanbukhtin to return the rent.

Dmitry Yukhnevich, who was found guilty by a jury of murdering businessman Alexei Pokrovsky, received 24 years in prison. For the rest of the defendants, the terms were distributed as follows: Igor Balashov, Sergey Shchukarev and German Grishin were 23 years each, Gennady Lukyanov and Sergey Shcherbakov were 22 years in prison.

The court also sentenced the defendants to fines of two to four million rubles and compensation for moral damage totaling more than 43 million rubles in civil claims by the victims. Among them is the daughter of Valery Zhuravlev, CEO of Rospishcheprom, who was killed in 2008, as well as Maryam Bikchurin, who worked as a waitress at the Old Phaeton restaurant, where Grandfather Hassan was killed. During the shooting, the woman suffered a spinal cord injury with damage to her lower extremities.

The victims in the case are also the wife, son and daughter of businessman Alexei Pokrovsky, who was killed in the early 2000s, the son of Armen Avanesov, who was killed for not paying Zhirnokleev a debt of $50,000, and the widow of Andrei Bralyuk, a lawyer at the Moscow department store, who was killed in 2009.

Zhirnokleev in his last word asked the court not to sentence him to the term requested by the prosecutor, who asked for 23-25 years for the defendants in the case. The Tagansky leader stated that he had "worked for 35 years, had not committed any crimes," and asked the court to acquit him.

"I'm 67 years old, I have 11 chronic diseases, I won't live for 25 years anyway," he said. — And out of them, 12 years of strict regime — it would have been better if I had been shot. These are torture conditions.

Zhirnokleev's lawyer, Mark Kaverzin, told Izvestia that he would appeal the verdict.

"The sentence is harsh, and some episodes had to be stopped, taking into account the expiration of the statute of limitations, which the court did not do," he said.

The place of detention of "Taganskiye"

The Taganskys will spend half of their maximum sentences in prison, said Egor Panin, a lawyer at the Avex Yust law firm.

"In prison, convicts are constantly held in maximum—security cells, in general—regime colonies — in barracks with relatively free movement around the territory, and in high—security colonies - in cells, but with the possibility of leaving under escort," the lawyer explained. — Conditions in prison are stricter than in the colony: there are fewer visits, walks and transfers, and the contingent consists of particularly dangerous criminals and repeat offenders.

An organized criminal group is one of the most difficult types of crime in terms of proving the guilt of the accused, former investigator Alexei Borodakov told Izvestia.

"Such groups were characterized by stability, strict subordination of participants, while each committed crimes of different categories," the lawyer said. — The investigation needs to determine and prove the role of each participant individually, and there may be dozens of them in such organized criminal groups. Also, for 20-30 years, the statute of limitations has been extended for many crimes committed.

During the heyday of criminal gangs, eyewitnesses of crimes were often intimidated, they were afraid to testify against bandits, the investigator emphasized. People feared for their lives, the lives of their loved ones, and the safety of their property. For this reason, many participants in the crimes of those years can still remain at large, Alexey Borodakov believes.

"Often, former members of such groups begin to testify against their former "classmates" already in prison," he said. — This is becoming a serious help for the work of investigators aimed at exposing such persons.

The long sentences awarded to the defendants against the background of serious charges look justified and correspond to the practice in similar cases, among them there are life sentences, Egor Panin noted.

"But a harsh sentence by itself does not guarantee the liquidation of the organized crime group," the lawyer believes.

The main result of the activities of such structures remains large capitals and assets, which today are often controlled by legal businessmen or transferred abroad, he said.