Russian Ivan Kochetkov, whom the investigation in Russia considers one of the accomplices in the murder of investigator Yevgenia Shishkina, was released in Georgia. This is reported by his lawyer and a source close to the family.
Interior Ministry investigator Yevgenia Shishkina was shot dead in the Moscow region in October 2018. The perpetrator and mediator of the murder is already serving time in the colonies. The alleged organizer is awaiting trial in another case in a Moscow pre-trial detention center.
Ivan Kochetkov was detained in Georgia at the request of Interpol in May 2020, they wrote BBC and a telegram channel Tbilisi_life.
“Now he is at large,” Ivan Kochetkov’s lawyer Georgy Kondakhishvili told Present Time. A source of Present Time, close to the Kochetkov family, confirmed this information. When asked what is the status of the 24-year-old Russian, the lawyer and the source did not answer.
The question about the status was not answered in the Tbilisi City Court either. There, Present Time was told that the “extradition case [Кочеткова] is being processed by the prosecutor’s office. “The supervisory agencies of Georgia and Russia, as well as the Ministry of Justice of Georgia, ignored the editorial requests.
That Kochetkov was released from prison, writes Meduza citing an anonymous source in the Investigative Committee, as well as a source close to the investigation. They claim that Kochetkov left the pre-trial detention center on recognizance not to leave in connection with the expiration of the maximum detention period (in Georgia it is nine months).
This means that Kochetkov could have been released from prison in February 2021.
In Russia, Kochetkov is still wanted, according to the information on the website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Now, opposite his name is the note “re-declared”.
Murder on the darknet: how Evgenia Shishkina died
On the morning of October 10, 2018, Evgenia Shishkina, an investigator for especially important cases of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ transport department, left her house in the village of Arkhangelskoye, Moscow Region, and headed towards the parking lot. A native of St. Petersburg, Abdulaziz Abdulazizov, ran up to the woman and shot her at least twice. Shishkina died on the spot from her wounds.
Abdulazizov was sentenced to 14 years. The mediator of the murder, St. Petersburg resident Kirill Grunsky, was sentenced to 9.5 years in prison by the court. They are now 21 and 19 years old, respectively.
The investigation believes that the hacker Yaroslav Sumbaev was the ordering party for the murder: he found the mediator and executor on the darknet, according to the materials of the criminal case, which was reviewed by Present Tense. The motive for the murder could be revenge: since 2013, the investigator has been dealing with the case of fictitious refunds of Russian Railways and S7 airline tickets worth 17.5 million rubles ($ 500,000 at the average rate for this period). In this case, 31-year-old Sumbaev is being accused. In September 2019, Sumbaev was extradited from Georgia. First, he faces a trial on the “ticket case”.
What is known about Ivan Kochetkov
Ivan Kochetkov is the husband of Yaroslav Sumbaev’s sister. All three: Ivan, his wife Daria and Yaroslav are from Astrakhan.
Before moving to Georgia, Kochetkov and his wife rented an apartment in the Orekhovo-Borisovo area in the south of Moscow. From there to the village of Arkhangelskoye, where Yevgenia Shishkina lived, an hour and a half drive. Kochetkov has done this path at least four times, investigators say.
According to their version, Kochetkov parked near Shishkina’s house and, together with an unidentified accomplice, collected information about the environment, the location of video cameras and the investigator’s routes of movement, reporting everything to Sumbaev. On the basis of these data, the young people compiled escape routes for the killer.
Investigators have restored the routes of Kochetkov’s movement through the base stations, with which his phone contacted, follows from the case file. But on the morning of January 14, 2018, Kochetkov’s phone was turned off. During these hours, Shishkina’s car was burned.
Immediately after the arson, she received several messages from an unfamiliar number, including the following: “And you are not talkative, it is even wonderful that you are silent, it means that everything has been done in the case.”
The Kochetkovs moved to Georgia nine days before Shishkina’s murder, on October 9, 2018. In Georgia, Kochetkov could become the second person in Sumbayev’s illegal drug business, the BBC wrote, citing a source close to the investigation. After the arrest of his brother-in-law, Kochetkov could head the store.
Kochetkov served his arrest in the Gldani prison in the north of Tbilisi. But Georgia, for some reason, did not consider the request of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office. As a result, he was released.
Defenders of Kochetkov and Sumbaev in Georgia and Russia insist on their innocence.
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