The Kirovo-Chepetsk Court of the Kirov Region approved the substitution on February 4, and the Kirov Regional Court upheld the ruling on March 30 after prosecutors appealed, Kommersant and Meduza reported. Lyakhovets had served half of an 11.5-year term, the threshold required for such a replacement.
Lyakhovets was deputy head of the drug control department at the Moscow police directorate for the Western Administrative District. He was arrested in January 2020 along with four subordinates and spent almost seven years in custody.
The other defendants — Maxim Umetbayev, Akbar Sergaliyev, Denis Konovalov and Roman Feofanov — had their remaining sentences replaced with forced labor in 2023 and January 2024. After appeal, their terms ranged from 4.5 to 7.5 years.
Golunov told Kommersant he learned of Lyakhovets's release after the fact, saying the court did not notify him of the hearing. The journalist maintains that the officers fabricated the case against him on someone's orders after one of his publications. The court did not identify who gave the order.
Golunov, then a special correspondent for Meduza, was detained in Moscow in June 2019 and accused of attempted drug trafficking. The prosecution was dropped after a public campaign in his support. In 2021, the five officers were found guilty of abuse of office, falsification of evidence and illegal drug trafficking. According to investigators, they were trying to improve their department's performance figures.
Golunov said law enforcement officials have not contacted him about the search for the person who ordered the case in the past four years.