Is the same hand signing anti-corruption decrees and new appointments? While the new owner of the Kremlin now and then shows his strict face to the people, intimidating terrorists and encroachers on the sovereign foundations, the most vigilant compatriots have managed to ...

Is the same hand signing anti-corruption decrees and new appointments?

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While the new master of the Kremlin now and then shows his stern face to the people, frightening terrorists and encroachers on the sovereign foundations, the most vigilant fellow citizens managed to notice the opposite whim of power: mercy for the fallen. She is selective and somewhat strange, but in her intentions she is firm and consistent. We somehow soon got used to the fact that a series of former bosses stretched from seemingly endless oblivion to former fame: the mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of Grozny, Beslan Gantamirov, and the chairman of the State Statistics Committee of Russia, Yuri Yurkov. They have one thing in common: liberties with the law and respect for authority, no matter what is in the yard. But there is a difference: Sobchak appeared to the people from voluntary exile, Gantamirov - from a prison cell, Yurkov - from under the sword of Damocles, accusations of embezzlement and bribery on a large scale that are still hanging over him.

If the prophecy about the tough times ahead of us with an indispensable struggle for discipline and order at every workplace is true, it will be useful to find out what these three lucky ones have done, by what miracle they have been cleansed of their sins and are now ready to reckon with their detractors. One discovery immediately suggests itself: the Kremlin is tired of capricious and unpredictable courtiers, and, as you know, yesterday's sinners are the most devoted of all. Yes, and it’s easy to point at them: here they are, sentences and operational developments, just dig.

Sobchak's accusation was already ready

No matter how anyone treats Sobchak, everyone will agree: in the finest hour of Gorbachev's perestroika and Yeltsin's rebellion, there was no equal to him. A brilliant orator who captivated the public with his magnificent Russian speech, impeccable logic and fearlessness, he was good both at the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, and at meetings of the Interregional Group, and thousands of rallies in Luzhniki.

A modest professor at Leningrad University, Sobchak almost instantly became a popular favorite, a leader who is always right.

His further path is only ascending. May 23, 1990 - Chairman of the Leningrad City Council. June 12, 1991 - Mayor of Leningrad.

No matter how hard I try, I just can’t remember Sobchak of that time in a modest professorial suit, the simplicity of which he touched in deputy troubles. Now it's a tailcoat, then a tuxedo. Receptions, presentations, openings, meetings of high people, banquets, travels abroad. Chill in relations with the press. Metal in the voice, a contemptuous turn and an angry removal.

However, God bless him - a man became the mayor of a huge city, the northern capital, is it really impossible to put on a tuxedo and allow a whim? I repeat, everything would be fine if evil tongues did not reproach the mayor for his irrepressible passion for multi-room apartments for himself and his relatives, for more than strange relations with officials subordinate to him and trying to please businessmen.

1996 turned out to be bad for Sobchak: in June he lost the elections, his rival Yakovlev became governor. And then the Prosecutor General's Office opened a criminal case on the abuses of officials of the mayor's office, the mayor's consultant on housing Larisa Kharchenko and the head of the mayor's office Viktor Kruchinin were arrested.

On October 3, 1997, investigators from the Prosecutor General's Office met Sobchak when leaving the St. Petersburg branch of the UNESCO Foundation and invited him to testify as a witness.

There are many versions of this episode, one contradicting the other, and therefore I will give the floor to both the eyewitness and the official - the investigator of the General Prosecutor's Office for Particularly Important Cases Nikolai Mikheev:

- After our meeting, Sobchak called his wife, said that he was detained, and asked to come immediately. I couldn't stand it: Anatoly Alexandrovich, you're a lawyer, is that how they detain you? It became impossible to talk: Lyudmila Narusova intervened, something unimaginable began. Insults, screams ... She screamed that her husband was ill, that he had a heart attack, called an ambulance. Do you know what you remember? His blood pressure was 120/70, I would like that, I myself am hypertensive. He was taken to the intensive care unit, and I was left in a more than stupid position: Sobchak's accusation had already been printed, I had to present it after interrogation.

- What is the accusation?

- In taking a bribe, embezzlement, abuse of office.

The rest is known: a council of local luminaries recognized Sobchak as sick, he was taken to Paris on a private plane. There he lived until the autumn of last year. Then he returned. The case was taken away from me, the former subordinates of Sobchak Kharchenko and Kruchinin were released from custody.

I'll mention two more names. Sobchak was hidden from investigators in the ward of the Military Medical Academy by Colonel-General Yuri Shevchenko, its head. The task force on abuses in Smolny was led by Colonel Gennady Gorbunov from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation. General Shevchenko became the Minister of Health of Russia. Colonel Gorbunov was dismissed from the post of the first deputy head of the RUBOP of the Moscow Region, according to some reports, he is clearly being expelled from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Yes, the most important thing is that Vladimir Putin was Deputy Mayor of Sobchak for many years.

In circles close to Chernomyrdin...

On June 8, 1988, officers of the economic counterintelligence department of the FSB of the Russian Federation in their offices arrested the chairman of the State Statistics Committee of the Russian Federation, Yuri Yurkov, the first deputy chairman, Valery Dalin, and the director of the Main Computing Center, Boris Sahakyan.

Searches were carried out immediately in the offices, apartments and dachas of the arrested. Each was found large sums in rubles and foreign currency. Outdid all Sahakyan. In shoe boxes, he saved 2 million 500 thousand dollars.

For all three, the shock of the arrest was terrible, each immediately began to write a confession. 44-year-old Yury Yurkov, who had just parted ways with both his freedom and the post of minister, wrote: “I will not regret anything in order to justify myself both to the state and to my children.”

Yuri Alekseevich Yurkov has served as head of the State Statistics Committee of Russia since October 1993. Not an upstart - a hard worker and a bright head. He got into the Central Statistical Bureau of the USSR immediately after graduating from the institute, in 1975. Married, two children.

The case of Yurkov and his large company is being conducted by the investigator Nikolai Volkov, already familiar to me and the readers - the same one who is also involved in Aeroflot.

He told me the scheme of the trick invented by statisticians in a nutshell, it is simple and unsophisticated. Suppose one firm wants to know how Russia is doing with oil production. Her representative comes to the clerk girl and hears in response: we will prepare the data, the cost is a thousand dollars. You can in rubles at the exchange rate, or you can in dollars. Some clients paid in cash, others transferred money to the account of the State Statistics Committee. With the knowledge of Sahakyan, the accumulated amount was transferred to a one-day firm and immediately cashed out. Another bonanza is the leasing of many premises of the central office on Myasnitskaya and a garage on Chistye Prudy.

Absolutely the entire staff of the State Statistics Committee was bound by mutual responsibility, everyone participated in the scam.

Volkov says without a smile that only cleaners can be left free.

Profit moved along a well-established chain, from the bottom up. Everyone knew Yurkov's whims: he did not recognize rubles, only dollars, only the newest ones. Sahakyan too.

Yurkov lived in grand style - he built a luxurious house on the banks of the Pakhra, threatening half a million dollars on it. Moreover, he connected two apartments into one, but did not spend money on construction or repairs - the treasury paid.

For a year and a half, Volkov and his colleagues "turned out" more than 50 volumes. He is convinced that the evidence base will convince any court and at least Yurkov and Sahakyan will receive ten years in the camps. He is about to seat the defendants to get acquainted with the materials of the investigation and, if they are not very carried away by this occupation, by the summer he will refer the case to the court, which will do justice to the swindlers.

Alas, I do not share his optimism. Because, unlike Volkov, I carefully read the document with the boring title "Weekly monitoring of the group of experts of the Russian Regions based on the materials of the International Fund for Economic and Social Reforms." Date - June 8-15: exactly these days the statisticians were arrested. Experts are convinced that this action was ordered from above, and "for this reason, the actions of the Prosecutor General's Office and the FSB were perceived with particular concern in circles close to former Prime Minister Chernomyrdin."

“Potanin’s group, as well as Alekperov’s financial and industrial group, which had become close to it, were wary of the arrest of the top of the State Statistics Committee,” experts continue. - We must also remember that Yurkov is a member of the Leningrad clan of Chubais. It is no coincidence that literally the day after the arrest of a group of statisticians, a sharp destabilization began in the country.”

This was still not enough for us: it was enough for once to seat a single crook from the government on the bunk - the country was shaking.

Therefore, as soon as Yurkov's preventive measure was changed and released, the chairman of the board of directors of RAO Gazprom V. Chernomyrdin invited him to be his adviser.

So think: Yurkov will be imprisoned again - will another destabilization happen in Russia?

"You still need me!"

I wrote about the odyssey of Beslan Gantamirov in recent November, in the 42nd (D) issue of Novaya Gazeta. I wondered for a long time about his near future - now let's check where I was right and where I was wrong. Yes, and some curious details of the recent past of Beslan were remembered quite by accident.

I still remember how, on a December afternoon last year, I was sitting in a tiny cafe in the Swiss city of Bern, drinking coffee with federal police officer Heinz and talking about nothing - we were resting. Heinz paused, smiled, remembering something, and suddenly stunned me with the question: would it be possible for me to see Gantamirov? He explained: it was he who was pardoned in Russia today, but for Switzerland he was a swindler, and he remained. So Heinz is looking for his accounts in dozens of banks, on which more than one hundred thousand dollars rest. He jokes: Gantamirov will help the federals to pacify the militants, let him come to Switzerland - together we will look for money.

So far, the Kuzminsky Inter-Municipal Court of Moscow is convinced that Gantamirov stole 27 billion rubles from the funds donated by Moscow for the restoration of Chechnya, which was destroyed by it. And not for their own pleasures, but for the armament and maintenance of their militia units. Last year in April, after listening to the court's verdict of six years in prison, Gantamirov laughed his constant chuckle and widened his smile: "Citizens of the judge, remember: I will be released much earlier - when the Russian government will again solve problems with Chechnya."

And as if looking into the water: at the end of October, by decree of President Yeltsin, Gantamirov was pardoned. The lucky man did not crumble in gratitude, in numerous interviews he stubbornly repeated the same thing: he did not ask for any pardon, he is not going to repent of anything. In just two weeks, Gantamirov managed to quarrel with many influential figures of the Chechen opposition in Moscow, waved off the arms of the Chairman of the State Council blessed by the Kremlin, Malik Saidullaev, and immediately disappeared. As one might expect, Gantamirov appeared in Chechnya, was enthusiastically greeted by his supporters, with the help of the feds, he instantly knocked together a fully combat-ready Chechen police detachment of one and a half thousand people from them and had already managed to beat up the militants he hated. It can be guessed that Gantamirov would have gladly acted not under the wing of the federals, but as a free horseman, but a sober calculation told him for the time being not to blush and pretend to be obedient. Gantamirov himself became the deputy plenipotentiary representative of the Russian government in Chechnya Koshman, was enlisted in the cadres of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, and his fighters were accepted by the same Ministry of Internal Affairs for full allowance. The officers of the internal troops, who recently returned to Moscow from the battles near Grozny, told me that the Chechen police are fighting famously and wisely, and Beslan itself does not crawl out from under fire. More than once, Gantamirov swore that he would not allow any protege of the Kremlin to power in Chechnya, and if Russian politicians came up with the idea of ​​curtailing the war again, he would not be their ally here.

The case of Gantamirov was conducted by the same Volkov. We found a curious detail with him: the decision to arrest Gantamirov was signed in the Prosecutor General's Office on April 22, 1996 - the very next day after Dudayev was liquidated under mysterious circumstances.

Nothing strange: already then, on the eve of the presidential elections, Moscow was feverishly looking for a way out of the Chechen massacre, and Gantamirov actively interfered with this. The mayor of Grozny, tired of the Kremlin, was already arrested on May 3 at the Sheremetyevo airport. “I feel sorry for you,” Gantamirov laughed at the FSB officers. “You are making a mistake.”

The story of Gantamirov is another confirmation of one of the main principles of the Kremlin's policy: morality and law become a chimera when it comes to achieving one's own interests at any cost. Then an alliance is appropriate not only with a rogue - the battlefield, as was said long ago, belongs to marauders. Both in the Kremlin corridors and on Chechen soil.