Senior Russian anti-corruption official arrested after police find $123 million in cash at his home

Zakharchenko has said the money does not belong to him and maintained he is not guilty AFP

A senior anti-corruption official in Russia has been arrested after a police search found $123 million (£92 million) stashed in his apartment.

Dmitry Zakharchenko, deputy head of Moscow’s Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Committee for Economic Security and Combating Corruption, was detained on suspicion of abuse of power, obstruction of justice and accepting bribes after the money, worth around 8 billion rubles, was discovered.

Pictures purporting to show the cash seized in the raid on Thursday were published by Life.ru news, which alleged that investigators had to pause the search to find a big enough container to store the piles of money.

Around $2.2 million (£1.6 million) of the money seized was in Euros, Tass news agency reports. 

“The final amount is unknown. [Police] confiscated a cache only in [Zakharchenko’s] house; it is not yet known how many more assets [he has], but we are working in this direction,” a source told RIA Novosti.

“A large amount of cash was located in his study,” sources said.

Cash was also discovered in his car, according to the Moscow Times.

Police are also investigating links between Zakharchenko and a case against Russia’s NOTA bank, which was stripped of its license in November 2015 for violating banking regulations.

A police source told Tass that Zakharchenko’s arrest is connected with an embezzlement case involving 26 billion rubles from the bank.

In court on Saturday, 38-year-old Zakharchenko said the money does not belong to him and claimed the flat where the cash was found belonged to his sister.

Moscow’s Presnensky District Court later ruled that Zakharchenko should remain in custody until 8 November. 

Zakharchenko’s defence has filed an appeal against his detention.

"We have submitted an appeal against the Presnensky District Court’s ruling to take my client into custody as the necessary measure of restraint", his lawyer Yury Novikov told Tass.

Mr Novikov is previously cited by Interfax as saying: “We are asking about two alternative measures: home arrest or 70 million rubles ($1 million) bail.”