What an astonishing story.
The leader of the "GTA Gang," which had been killing people in the Moscow region, lived for several months in the home of Alexei Staroverov, head of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation's administrative department—that is, one of the senior officials in the agency, working directly under the Prosecutor General.
Staroverov himself (on the question of illicit enrichment) is a wealthy silovik (a member of Russia's security/law-enforcement establishment) with highly mysterious and opaque income. His official salary is relatively modest.
But at one point, as much as 50 million rubles — roughly over $1 million at the time — appeared from who knows where.
The gang leader's arrest followed the finest traditions of a "convenient arrest." Supposedly, the gangster ran out, threw a grenade, and was shot dead. After that, for some reason, the house where the criminals had been based burned down.
Apparently, they fired at the resisting scoundrel with a rocket-propelled flamethrower.
To sum up: the gang leader is dead, so he won't tell anyone anything. The house where he lived and where the gang gathered burned down. They later found a weapons cache there, but naturally the main evidence went up in flames. Just perfect.
Then it gets even more interesting: a criminal case is opened against the prosecutor's big shot relative (logically enough), but Deputy Prosecutor General Grin immediately cancels the order to open the case.
The "wealthy silovik" Staroverov himself makes a grand gesture—he turns down compensation for the house that burned down during the gangster's arrest. When a state official with a standard annual income of 1.6 million rubles (see the declaration above) refuses compensation for a burned-down house, that's wonderful, if you ask me.
Take note of this: the situation is not just scandalous, it's outrageous: a top aide to the Prosecutor General, a criminal case opened, the case opening revoked, gangsters, murders, grenades, a fire, unexplained money.
In other words, all the elements of a gripping thriller—one the whole country ought to be following.
Now let's look at "Yandex News" for the search term "Staroverov" to see which media outlets are actually covering all this: Vedomosti, Interfax, Forbes, Echo of Moscow, and the like. Just one segment from NTV.
Where is Channel One? Where is RTR? Where is the freedom-loving Russia Today? The entire TV propaganda machine has gone quiet and is pretending not to notice a thing.
We all like to call the authorities "bandits," and rightly so. These examples show that they are tied to—or covering for—real banditry, without quotation marks or exaggeration.