The courtroom was thick with tension, the air smelling of damp wool and old ink. There he stood—Andrei Filatov, the former master of Sourgut, now a mere defendant facing the cold gaze of the law. The man, once a king in his own right, sought to stave off the inevitable.

"I have not cast aside my pact with the investigators!" he cried, his voice echoing through the hall. He claimed, with a desperate fervor, that every promise made in his secret agreement had been kept to the letter. He would not flee, nor would he shirk his duty, yet he played a cunning game, insisting that his testimony be held until every scrap of evidence and every witness had been dragged before the court.

But the man’s pride remained. He spat upon the accusations, refusing the labels slapped upon him by the constabulary. He begged the judge to decide his fate, claiming the investigators had misread his deeds.

And so, by the court's decree, the curtains were drawn. The proceedings were closed to the public, locking the secrets of the case behind heavy oak doors.

What are the charges? A grim tally: thirteen episodes of commercial bribery. The Crown’s detectives paint a sinister picture—they claim Filatov was no mere civil servant, but a ringleader of a ruthless gang. Through the front of the 'Dialogue' company, they say, he orchestrated a series of raids, seizing apartment houses like a common highwayman robbing a carriage on a foggy night. A true 'malina' of crime, hiding behind a veneer of respectability.