Claim factor: the prosecutor's office demands to seize the property of the investigator in the Merlion case

The Prosecutor General's Office filed a lawsuit with the Babushkinsky District Court to confiscate the property of Sergei Romodanovsky, the former head of the investigative department of the Investigative Committee for the Northwestern Administrative District of Moscow, a source told Izvestia. He was previously sentenced to 19 years for corruption and falsification of evidence against the management of the IT company Merlion in order to obtain its assets. The ex-investigator is required to seize several apartments, a car and a collection of luxury watches totaling more than 75 million rubles. Such large anti—corruption lawsuits against employees of investigative bodies are an exception to the practice, experts say. The details of the high—profile case are in the Izvestia article.

Mercedes Watch and mother-in-law Collection

The Prosecutor General's Office demanded to seize property worth more than 75 million rubles from the former head of the investigative department of the Investigative Committee for the North-Western Administrative District of Moscow, Sergei Romodanovsky, a source told Izvestia. The preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 10.

In January 2026, the court sentenced Romodanovsky and other former security officials to terms ranging from 14 to 19 years in prison. The court found that Vyacheslav Simonenko, the former CEO of the IT company Merlion, staged an attempt on his life in 2020 and accused the co-owners of the company in order to seize their assets. For bribes from law enforcement officers, among whom was Romodanovsky, the case and evidence were fabricated. For the termination of the proceedings, Simonenko was going to demand 15 billion rubles from the top managers and founders of Merlion.

In 2024, Simonenko was sentenced to 22 years in a high-security penal colony. The prosecution named Alexei Nesnov, an ex—investigator in particularly important cases, as the main participant in the criminal scheme on the part of law enforcement officers. However, the man fled to the UAE and could not be brought to justice. Sergei Romodanovsky and the former head of the Khoroshevsky department of the Moscow Investigative Committee, Rustam Yusupov, employees of the FSB of Russia in Moscow and the Moscow region, Pavel Krylov and Alexander Bibishev, lawyer Vadim Lyalin and investigator Andrei Zhiryutin were in the dock.

In November 2023, during a search of Sergei Romodanovsky, operatives found 21 copies of watches with a total value of 13.1 million rubles. As a prosecutor's check later established, Romodanovsky and his family own property with a total value of over 75 million rubles. This is "more than seven times the official income of the defendant and his wife for 2019-2021, and indicates an origin from sources not provided for by law," the Izvestia source emphasized. According to him, Romodanovsky designed real estate objects for people close to him — his wife's mother and father.

As a result, the Prosecutor General's Office has now filed a lawsuit with the Babushkinsky District Court demanding that two apartments in the north-west of Moscow and a non-residential building with an area of 15.5 square meters, registered to the parents of Romodanovsky's wife, be converted into state income. In addition, the Prosecutor General's Office demands "to recover 4.2 million as the equivalent of a Mercedes-Benz AMG G63 car," which was first registered to the ex-investigator's mother-in-law and then sold, the lawsuit says.

Exclusion from practice

Filing anti—corruption lawsuits against investigators is an exception to the practice, and not a general trend, says Anton Klyuchko, head of the law office of Klyuchko, Landau and Partners.

— If we are not talking about high—ranking officials, the investigators are not the most affluent part of the population. These are people with a fairly low salary relative to the workload assigned to them," he believes. — Therefore, situations such as in the case with the investigators from the Merlion case, when there is a possibility of filing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, are rare.

But Veronika Polyakova, managing partner of the Business Legal Group Bar Association, believes that the seizure of property from investigators, interrogators and prosecutors is a common practice.

"If we are talking about the confiscation of funds and luxury goods, then for most economic and official crimes, it is inevitable," the lawyer told Izvestia.

She recalled that on April 2, 2026, a high-profile case against the former deputy Interior Minister of Dagestan, Rufat Ismailov, was considered in Moscow. He is accused of receiving large bribes and abuse of office. As a result, the court seized land, real estate, cars and jewelry worth more than 500 million rubles from the former law enforcement officer.

In recent years, the government has been strengthening the mechanism for seizing property from officials, Anton Pivovarov, a lawyer at the Moscow Sed Lex Bar Association, told Izvestia.

"This applies not only to officials, but also to law enforcement officers," the expert noted. — Such cases have begun to appear regularly in the public field, especially in major corruption episodes: we are usually talking about real estate, expensive cars, cash and luxury goods.

Anton Klyuchko added that the trend began to gain momentum in 2024, when the Constitutional Court clarified that it was possible to file anti-corruption lawsuits without regard to the statute of limitations. The existence of a conviction against the person against whom the lawsuit is filed is also optional.

— This has influenced the fact that cases of filing such lawsuits have become more frequent, — said the lawyer. — In 2025, the Prosecutor General's Office filed a lawsuit against retired Supreme Court judge Viktor Momotov for the seizure of assets worth 9 billion rubles, while no criminal case was initiated. This is one of the most striking examples.

Maxim Silvestri, a criminal defense lawyer, noted in an interview with Izvestia that arrests due to bribes are very common in judicial practice. For example, in January 2025, former Investigative Committee investigator Marat Tambiev received 16 years in prison for misappropriating 7 billion rubles.

According to Anton Pivovarov, confiscation of property is usually separated into a separate procedure: first, guilt is established in a criminal case, and then, as part of a civil or anti—corruption lawsuit, the origin of assets is checked.

"The time gap between the verdict and the lawsuit is not considered unusual in itself," the lawyer explained.

It is associated with the need to collect financial evidence, conduct expert examinations and compare expenses with official income, the expert concluded.