Russia detains powerful investigator for alleged links to mafia

Russian security services have detained Moscow's former chief investigator over alleged links to mafia bosses, in the latest high-profile arrest of a top official, local media said today.

General Alexander Drymanov, the former chief of the hugely powerful Investigative Committee's Moscow branch, was arrested by the Federal Security Service (FSB) in his apartment on Monday evening, Russian news agencies reported.

Drymanov was detained "in a case of accepting bribes by high-ranking officials in exchange for freeing" a notorious criminal, according to a source quoted by the Interfax news agency.

The 50-year-old general, who retired last month, was questioned by the FSB security service in Moscow's high-security Lefortovo jail, Drymanov's lawyer Alexander Karabanov was quoted as saying.

In 2016, Drymanov was a witness in a criminal probe against several senior investigators accused of accepting bribes for the release of an associate of mafia boss Zakhary Kalashov, seen as one of Russia's most influential criminals.

One of them -- Drymanov's former colleague Mikhail Maximenko -- was sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security prison and ordered to pay a fine of 165 million rubles ($2.6 million).

Nicknamed "Shakro the Young", Kalashov is a prominent member of Russia's so called "thieves in law" -- the masters of the Russian criminal underworld born out of the prisons of the Soviet-era gulag system.

Also known as "the Invisible Man", he lived in Spain for several years but had to flee in 2005 to dodge a major police operation.

He was eventually extradited from Dubai to Spain in 2006 and was only released from jail in 2014.

In March, a Russian court sentenced him to nine years and 10 months in a high security penal colony in a related extortion case.