Ex-Yaroslavl transport head partially admits bribery guilt

Former head of the Yaroslavl Oblast transport department (now a ministry) Tatiana Cheremnykh partially admitted her guilt in accepting bribes in court. This was reported by RIA Novosti on 20 January.

«I partially admit guilt, I will present my position in more detail later,» Tatiana Cheremnykh stated during a hearing at the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow.

RIA Novosti clarified that the court announced charges of systematic bribe-taking for assisting in concluding passenger transport contracts, creating auction conditions favoring a specific participant, and for general patronage.

According to the prosecution, former director of LLC «Gruppa Movista» Alexander Sovetnikov organized the fictitious employment of straw persons, whose salaries were transferred to cards. The defendants in the criminal case, including Tatiana Cheremnykh, had access to these. The amount of bribes was 1 million 680 thousand rubles (approximately $18,700 at current rates).

Moreover, the investigation believes that Sovetnikov also handed over bribes personally or through intermediaries, with a total amount of 2 million 420 thousand rubles (approximately $26,900 at current rates).

According to data from the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow, three hearings have already been held in this criminal case: on 29 and 30 December 2025, as well as 20 January 2026. The next session is scheduled for 3 February.

What is known about the criminal case

Recall that on 24 May 2023, in Yaroslavl, the head of what was then the Yaroslavl Oblast transport department Tatiana Cheremnykh, director of the «Organizer of Transport of Yaroslavl Oblast» Ilya Prokopyev, and his deputy Oleg Ivanovsky were detained on suspicion of accepting bribes on a particularly large scale.

Simultaneously, in Moscow, the general director of one of Russia«s largest public transport concessionaires, »Movista Regiony« Alexander Sovetnikov, was detained in the same case. He is accused of giving bribes on a particularly large scale. He was transported from the capital to Yaroslavl on 26 May for a pretrial restraint measure. On that day, all four suspects were sent to a pretrial detention center.

Note that in May 2024, the bribery case in transport was transferred to the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in Moscow.

Earlier, we detailedly told about each defendant in the criminal case and analyzed how they reshaped transport in Yaroslavl and Russia. Everything known about the high-profile case is published in a special report.