Interior Ministry elite officers were paid to take part in a mass fight over the ownership of a Moscow restaurant, the Kommersant daily said on Saturday.
More than 50 people, some with firearms and knives, participated in the April 7 showdown in the Mechta restaurant in southeast Moscow. There were 25 arrests and five people were hospitalized.
A police source told Kommersant that “eight servicemen” were detained and one was hospitalized with “a gunshot wound to the stomach.”
He also said that an Interior Ministry official had given orders for the firing of all the officers involved –with their dismissals backdated to before the brawl.
The Interior Ministry has denied that any of its employees took part in the fight, and says that its men were in the restaurant “to eat.”
MOSCOW, April 9 (RIA Novosti)