The air in the southern coast was thick, not with the salt of the sea, but with the stench of corruption. It is a story that would make even the most seasoned Bow Street runner blush. A certain gentleman of the law, one Sergey Bogdanovich—a retired judge of the Lazarevsky district in Sochi—thought himself clever enough to play a game of dice with Justice herself.

Now, the Great Investigator, Alexander Bastrykin, has cast his eye upon this rogue. He has petitioned the High Qualification Board of Judges for the authority to throw the shackles upon Bogdanovich. The charge? A most brazen display of avarice.

Imagine the scene: the judge, draped in his dignity, whispered a promise to a desperate soul named Safarbi Napso. For the paltry sum of fifty million rubles, Bogdanovich pledged to bend the law, to ensure the prisoner's trial followed a 'special order' and that he would never see the inside of a cold, damp cell. A bargain struck in the shadows, where the law is but a commodity for the highest bidder.

On the first of July, in the year 2025, the first installment of this dirty coin—some twenty-five million rubles—changed hands. The meeting took place not in a mahogany office, but upon the grounds of a petrol station, handled by a trio of shifty middlemen: Oleg Zenin, Roman Nesterenko, and Sergey Khrebtenko. Typical hucksters of the underworld, playing the part of messengers for a greedy master.

As I write this, Zenin and Nesterenko are already facing the magistrates for their role in this sordid affair, while the third accomplice is being dealt with in a separate proceeding.

It seems the rot is spreading. Only recently, the Investigator Bastrykin turned his gaze toward another, one Elena Stepantsova, the chairwoman of the Anzhero-Sudzhensk court in the Kemerovo region. One wonders how many more of these 'pillars of society' are merely painted wood, waiting for the right price to crumble.