AJ
Russian courts confiscated the property of the former chairman of the Rostov Regional Court and her family members as state revenue, following a conviction for accepting bribes on December 22, 2025.
Elena Zolotareva attended the Pervomaisky District Court to hear a civil case on the claim of the Deputy Prosecutor General against Elena Zolotareva, Sergey Zolotarev and Maria Dankievich about the confiscation, and heard that the court opted in favour of the Prosecutor in respect of which no evidence of property acquisition by legal income had been provided.
On December 22, 2025, Elena Zolotareva was sentenced to 15 years in a general-regime colony and fined 170 million rubles.
According to the materials submitted to the court, Zolotareva is the actual owner of real estate and vehicles acquired with money obtained illegally, so in order to avoid declaring the property, Zolotareva registered it in the name of her son Sergey Zolotarev, and trusted person Maria Dankievich.
Taking into account the above, the court satisfied the claims in full, confiscating the defendants’ property as state revenue, including an apartment, a parking space, a Toyota Land Cruiser car, and a Toyota Alphard car, as well as money seized during the searches of Zolotareva’s home and office, including 128,810,000 rubles, 27,880 Euros and 11,700 dollars, amounting to a total of 17,600,749 rubles, and the Zolotarevs were also fined 4,000,000 rubles as the equivalent value of the alienated real estate.
Another case has also been filed, involving the former head of the Leninsky District Court of Rostov Aleksey Kudelin, as well as the former prosecutor of the Poltava District of Rostov, Roman Agapov.
Investigators had established that in 2022, Zolotareva and her associates bribed judges with sums ranging from 400 thousand to 10 million rubles to pressure them into making decisions favourable to their clients.
Almost all judges of the Rostov Regional Court, employees of the Rostov Regional Prosecutor’s Office, and district prosecutors were implicated in the case of Elena Zolotareva and Tatyana Yorova, while the head of the Sovestsky District Court of Rostov Elena Kobleva was also under investigation, and another group of Sovesty District Court judges is on the waiting list.
