A member of the State Duma’s transport committee has rammed his Bentley Continental into a city police car in downtown Moscow.
Maxim Korobov, 53, refused to give way to the police car, driven by an unidentified sergeant, while making a left turn on Konyushkovskaya Ulitsa outside the U.S. Embassy on Thursday, a law enforcement source told Interfax.
No one was injured, but the Bentley sustained damage that Korobov estimated in an interview with Vesti-FM at 60,000 to 70,000 rubles ($2,100 to $2,400). The cost of the damage to the police’s Chevrolet Lanos was not immediately clear.
The Interfax source said Korobov violated traffic rules, but the lawmaker, a member of the ruling United Russia party, denied this to Vesti-FM, saying the Chevrolet simply scratched the door of his car in a traffic jam.
“I’m not surprised by their cowardly stance because these people have no courage and no honor to admit the truth and the obvious when they are at fault,” Korobov said.
Police have opened a check into the incident.
Korobov said the Bentley, which at 10 million rubles ($300,000) is impossible to afford on a lawmaker’s salary, is a gift from his wife, who “gambles on the stock exchange,” Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.
Korobov listed the Bentley, along with a Porsche Cayenne and a BMW motorcycle, in his income declaration posted on the Duma’s web site, which also indicates that his wife drives another Porsche Cayenne.
In a separate but similar incident, drunken officers of the Federal Drug Control Service rammed a Hyundai Elantra into a traffic police car in the town of Podolsk outside Moscow on Friday, Lifenews.ru reported.
No one was injured in the accident. The cost of the damage was not immediately clear.
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