Court refuses house arrest of Lercek jewellery investigator

Basmanny court of Moscow refused to satisfy the petition of the investigator on the election of house arrest for investigator Nikita Tulupov in the case of the disappearance of jewelry seized from blogger Valeria Chekalina (Lerchek), told RBC in the press service of the Moscow city court.

The main investigation department of the Investigative Committee appealed to the court. The investigation asked to choose house arrest for Tulupov. Tulupov himself did not admit guilt, writes TASS.

The criminal case was initiated after the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ own security revealed violations in the storage of seized property. As noted by the lawyer Chekalina Viktor Dugin, one of the investigators after the end of the investigation in the criminal case Lerchek and her ex-wife Artem Chekalin did not return the blogger jewelry in the amount of 14.4 million rubles.

It was previously established that some of the material values seized as part of the investigative actions were not attached to the criminal case as evidence and were stored in violation of the established procedure, which caused their loss.

The property was seized on February 7 during searches. We are talking about 22 sets of jewelry and 46 million rubles in cash. Lawyers insisted that the jewelry was not seized and they were not recognized as physical evidence. On July 31, the Gagarin court of Moscow sentenced Chekalin to five years probation and a fine of 765 million rubles for illegal currency transactions. She was also banned from working online for three years.

In April 2026, the court sentenced the former husband of Valeria Chekalina Artem Chekalin to seven years in prison. Artem Chekalin asked the court in the case of a conviction to appoint him a suspended sentence, citing the interests of the children and the serious state of health of their mother.