The head of Moscow Station in St Petersburg has been charged, along with two of his employees, with conspiring to steal 900,000 rubles in cash that a passenger had left in a backpack at the station's lost-and-found luggage office, the press service of St Petersburg's courts reported.
The Smolninsky District Court ordered Artur Zhuravlev, the station chief, his deputy Olga Sidor, and Lyubov Kulkova, a storekeeper at the station's automated left-luggage facility, to be held in pretrial detention. Investigators believe the three entered into a prior criminal conspiracy and systematically appropriated property handed in to the office that holds lost and unclaimed belongings.
Moscow Station's role in the city
Moscow Station is one of St Petersburg's main railway terminals and the principal departure point for trains to Moscow, one of Russia's busiest intercity rail routes.
Investigators say Kulkova, while working in the storage office, received a backpack from transport security officers containing 702,275 Russian rubles, 1,440 US dollars, 200 euros, 2,000 Chinese yuan, 50 Turkish lira, 20 Israeli shekels, 2,000 Kazakhstani tenge, 210 Serbian dinars, 1,000 Japanese yen and 300 Belarusian rubles. Converted into rubles, the foreign currency alone came to at least 174,285.43 rubles.
How the cash allegedly disappeared
Knowing that a passenger was searching for the backpack, Kulkova is accused of drawing up a report that made no mention of the valuables inside it. She is said to have placed the money in a black bag, hidden it under her clothing and carried it out of the storage office, passing it to Sidor, who in turn handed it to Zhuravlev.
Zhuravlev is accused of locking the money in a safe in his office. The backpack itself was returned to its owner, with no mention made of the cash and currency it had originally contained.
The stolen property was seized on August 26 during an inspection of the scene, when investigators found it in the safe in the station chief's office. Zhuravlev, Sidor and Kulkova were detained on September 11 and formally charged.
Separate fraud case in Yekaterinburg
Prosecutors in Yekaterinburg separately approved an indictment against a self-employed businessman accused of defrauding residents who had hired him to build houses. Between July 2024 and February 2025, he is said to have taken more than 2.5 million rubles from two clients for the construction of individual homes but never carried out the work.
