Massive police raid conducted on city market

Over 300 people were detained after special-forces police raided Sadovod, one of the city’s biggest retail markets on Friday.

Besides the market itself, the market workers’ temporary dwellings and all the cars in the area were also searched for weapons, explosives and drugs, according to the police’s press-service, which didn’t provide further details on the results.

On previous occasions various crimes including shootings and kidnappings had been investigated at the market in Moscow’s southeastern outskirts, but this raid, carried out by over 200 special-forces officers, was the biggest operation carried out on the site in recent history.

Altogether 370 people were detained after the raid, some of who were on the wanted lists on suspicion of various crimes, Interfax reported. Dozens of people were found to have broken immigration laws.

“Fifty foreign citizens have been detained who had no official registration and stayed on the Russian territory illegally,” Zalina Kornilova, an official representative of the Migration Service, told Interfax.

Various trading rules were also found to have been violated at Sadovod. “A probe was carried out into 430 trading spots on the territory of the market,” police spokesman, Alexei Bakhromeyev, was cited by Interfax as saying.

Despite rumors that Moscow official were going to close Sadovod after their clampdown on other vast markets in Moscow, Sadovod hasn’t ceased operating. Furthermore, it has become one of the capital's biggest trade areas after other markets, Cherkizovsky and Luzhniki, were closed by the authorities.