Wiped out: two brothers convicted in the case of smuggling half a ton of cocaine

Brothers Georgy and Ivan Radomirov, accused of smuggling 472 kg of cocaine through the port of St. Petersburg, were sentenced to 21 and 14 years in prison. Earlier, the Prosecutor General's Office had secured the cancellation of the jury's acquittal in their case, but the Radomirovs' accomplices — three Lithuanian citizens — were able to escape while they were at large. The information about why the convicts escaped punishment, how the police were going to infiltrate the group and in which shootout its leader was wounded is in the Izvestia article.

"I was declared a drug lord"

The Moscow City Court re-examined the high-profile case of cocaine smuggling from Ecuador after the First Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction agreed with the arguments of the Prosecutor General's Office about violations during the process.

According to the prosecution, the defendants were part of a criminal group of Lithuanian Vigantas Ramanauskas. According to the press service of the Prosecutor General's Office, from January 2013 to April 2019, its participants carried out six smuggling shipments of cocaine with a total weight of more than 472 kg from Ecuador to the seaport of St. Petersburg for sale in Russia.

Natalia Klishina, a former investigator of the Interior Ministry's Board of Internal Affairs, who was investigating the case, told Izvestia about the details of the investigation. According to her, in the 1990s, Ramanauskas was involved in the theft of expensive cars, for which he was convicted. The man was caught red-handed in the early 2000s, but was released on parole just a year after the verdict.

Ramanauskas came to the attention of the operatives again in the 2010s. Then the employees of the Federal Drug Control Service traced the supply channels allegedly connected with him. As the former law enforcement officers themselves told RIA Novosti, they had a plan: to infiltrate the group under the guise of corrupt police officers, but the authorities did not approve of the idea. As a result, Ramanauskas outmanoeuvred the operatives and wrote a statement about extortion of a bribe. The employees who led its development were detained and convicted. The defendant emphasized this during the first trial.

"In late 2014 and early 2015, I appeared in court in the case of police officers and I started having problems... I was declared a drug lord," Ramanauskas insisted. "Why did they decide to give such testimony against me in 2020?"

"The defendants announced information discrediting the prosecution witnesses"

According to ex-investigator Natalia Klishina, the development of Ramanauskas was continued by her colleagues from the FSB and the Interior Ministry. During the investigation, his alleged accomplices were identified — nephews Koretsas Mindaugas, Ernestas Kazlauskas and Russian Georgy Radomirov. In 2015, Ramanauskas was detained in the Leningrad region after his alleged involvement in a "shootout" with competitors. Then the man was slightly injured. The security forces had no direct evidence of the Lithuanian's involvement in smuggling, but he was ordered to leave Russia.

Ramanauskas unsuccessfully tried to challenge this decision — his wife and child lived in Russia. Then the man changed his passport data, becoming Igoris Grigas according to the documents. He was detained under this name in 2019. The nephews of the alleged leader of the group were taken near a container with drugs. He himself once again managed to escape, although he was not far from the place of detention, according to law enforcement officers. Nevertheless, a month later, Ramanauskas was taken into custody along with the Radomirov brothers.

During the investigation, more than 230 witnesses were questioned, more than 50 searches and 150 examinations were conducted, the Interior Ministry emphasized. In 2021, 270 volumes of the criminal case were brought to court. The Prosecutor General's Office immediately asked the Supreme Court to change the jurisdiction and move the proceedings from St. Petersburg to Moscow. The supervisory authority argued the need for this with Ramanauskas' likely corruption ties in the region.

However, in the capital, the defendants also reached an acquittal verdict by the jury. Everyone was released from custody in the courtroom. Ramanauskas was found guilty only on minor counts of illegally crossing the border. The time he spent in the detention facility was counted as the time he had already served his sentence. After that, all three defendants in the case from Lithuania took the opportunity to escape. As a result, the Lithuanians were put on the wanted list, and the Radomirov brothers who remained in St. Petersburg were later re-taken into custody, said Elena Belozerova, a lawyer for the Russians.

Appealing the acquittal, representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office stressed that the defense and the defendants influenced the opinion of the jury, going beyond what was acceptable in the process. As the prosecution pointed out in the appeal, the defense and the defendants announced "information discrediting the prosecution's witnesses, which influenced the assessment of the reliability of their testimony."

Lawyer Elena Belozerova stressed that this time the jury also considered some of the episodes of the indictment to be unproven. Georgy Radomirov was found guilty of four crimes instead of 12, and his brother of two of the four.