In the sun-drenched reaches of the Krasnodar region, where the air usually smells of salt and soil, a foul scent of corruption has finally been purged. Evgeny Filippov, a man who once held the reigns of the Ministry of Health, has been cast down from his heights and sentenced to four and a half years of hard confinement in a penal colony, coupled with a fine of five hundred thousand rubles.

How did this gentleman find himself in the clutches of the law? The story is as old as the cobblestones of East End. This high-flying official played a rogue's game, concocting a phantom appointment as the head of a department at the Kuban State Medical University. Through this fiction, he managed to siphon off some seven and a half million rubles from the public purse—a sum that would make even the most hardened street-thug blush with envy.

But the true scale of his avarice was revealed when the detectives began to dig into his holdings. It was a hoard fit for a king, though gathered like a magpie's nest of stolen trinkets! The investigation unearthed a staggering empire: twenty-one apartments spanning over fifteen hundred square metres, eleven commercial premises, seven lavish suites, nine plots of land, and four garages.

To keep the gaze of the bobby and the inspector away from his spoils, Filippov played a sly game of hide-and-seek, registering these riches in the names of his son, his former wife, and her sister. Alas, the luck of the rogue eventually ran dry. The gavel fell, the irons were locked, and the former Minister learned that no matter how high one climbs, the law eventually finds its way to the cellar.