Termination measure

Liberal amendments to the Criminal Code came into force, and businessmen rushed out of prisons. Investigators are looking for ways to stop them

47-year-old Sergey Grishchenko, the former owner of the Kaliningrad airline KD Avia, became one of the first defendants in a high-profile criminal case, which took advantage of the presidential package of amendments to the economic articles of the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure. Grishchenko was in jail on charges of deliberate bankruptcy and abuse of power. Investigator Anzhelika Kulikova refused to change his preventive measure, but Grishchenko proved in court that it was illegal. Now Kulikova may become the first security official to suffer from the same amendments. The businessman demands to open a criminal case against her.

The amendments entered into force on April 9, and on the 16th, Grishchenko was already at large. Medvedev's amendments abolish arrests for those suspected of economic crimes - except in exceptional cases - and greatly reduce the punishment for those convicted. Businessmen leave the pre-trial detention center, investigators reclassify cases, and courts review already passed sentences. Courts are required to do this because statutory relief is retroactive.

But not everything is so simple and rosy. “Crooks are already going free in droves, where will we look for them later?” - an employee of the Investigative Committee under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia is indignant. In the nine months of last year, 37 out of 6,000 businessmen released on bail went on the run. How many of them there will be now, the investigators are worried and do not hide the fact that they are looking for any ways to leave entrepreneurs behind bars, looking for loopholes in the new legislation. Now the scams and provocations on the part of the investigation will turn into a system, lawyers complain and even talk about the sabotage of the presidential amendments.

LIKE A KNIFE IN THE BACK

The process has begun. Last week, the criminal case against Mikhail Gutseriev, the owner of RussNeft, was closed. He was accused that RussNeft produced more oil than the license allowed, and he was charged with two articles - illegal business and legalization of criminally acquired funds on an especially large scale. Gutseriev left for London. Experts had no doubt that Gutseriev's case was political, just like the informal agreement on his return. But under the new amendments, violating a license is not a crime at all, so now there is nothing to accuse Gutseriev of.

The former chairman of the NEP bank, Boris Sokalsky, was also released. He was accused of organizing one of the largest illegal money laundering schemes in the history of modern Russia and illegal cashing of 71 billion rubles. Sokalsky was given seven years, but after the amendments were adopted, they were reduced to three, which he had already served in a pre-trial detention center.

Alexander Gitelson, the former owner of the VEFK bank, one of the largest in St. Petersburg, also left the pre-trial detention center after spending a year there. He was accused of misappropriation and - again - legalization of the bank's funds in the amount of 890 million rubles. Legalization has ceased to be a particularly difficult article, and now it is impossible to keep him in custody for more than a year.

“These amendments are like a knife in the back: so much work, and all in vain,” the investigator for especially important cases in the Investigative Committee under the Ministry of Internal Affairs is worried. He gives an example: in 2008-2009, a large group of interregional bankers sent tens of billions of rubles abroad. Two defendants in this case, Kirill Tormyshov and Alexander Dorokhin, have already been released on bail of three and four million rubles.

“It's just ridiculous: for them it's not money, the bail is simply inadequate,” the investigator is indignant. He is sure that now they will run abroad. For example, Dmitry Pak was accused of trying to steal $71 million from the Kazakh BTA Bank, he left the pre-trial detention center on bail of 45 million rubles, and three months later he was removed from the train at the Russian-Finnish border.

UNDER HOUSE ARREST

Dmitry Pak found 45 million rubles, but for many this is too much. What bail to appoint, the judges decide. And that is why they often still have the opportunity to leave entrepreneurs behind bars - especially since they willingly listen to the requests of investigators. Konstantin Krainev, the director general of the Moscow-based suspected Respect League company, was accused of major credit fraud. In mid-April, the Moscow City Court assigned him a bail of 50 million rubles, and Krainev remained in jail - he could not collect this amount.

Investigators have already come up with another way to still put entrepreneurs in a pre-trial detention center: to formulate the conditions of house arrest for them in such a way that the accused will inevitably violate them. And then you can legally take into custody. “For example, it is possible to forbid, without the written permission of the investigator, to leave the apartment even to the entrance or the store, to use telephones, a computer, to communicate with people,” says one of the investigators.

It can be even tougher. “Now we are resolving the issue of house arrest for one accused and we will ask the court to prohibit him from communicating with his wife, who is a witness in the same criminal case,” said the investigator for especially important cases of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. But how to control it? “Let the court approve the conditions [of house arrest], and then we will figure out how to control them,” he says.

Another popular ploy is to put a suspect on a so-called trumped-up wanted list. This is very convenient, the source in the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs believes, because if the suspect was on the federal wanted list, the judge will almost always leave him behind bars. The usual reception, Yana Yakovleva, president of the non-profit partnership Business Solidarity, nods. She explains how it is done: the investigator sends summons to the wrong address or brings them to the office and gives them to the guard; did not appear a couple of times for interrogation - they put him on the wanted list.

Entrepreneur Serafim Yakovlev was accused in September 2009 of tax evasion for 126 million rubles. “They put him in a pre-trial detention center on a fabricated wanted list,” says his wife Olga. “The Supreme Court found that he was put on the wanted list illegally.” For non-payment of taxes, they have not been imprisoned in a pre-trial detention center since January of this year (only in exceptional cases), but nothing has changed in the fate of Yakovlev. The article was simply changed to another one, and now he is accused of embezzlement. Last week, he was supposed to have his preventive measure reviewed. But the court again left him behind bars with the same wording: "He can hide from the investigation, he was on the federal wanted list."

In addition, not all articles of the economic block of the Criminal Code fell under liberalization. For example, smuggling. In January of this year, the Perovsky District Court of Moscow issued an unprecedented sentence to capital businessman Oleg Roshchin - 18 years in a strict regime colony. He was accused of 526 episodes of smuggling - allegedly Roshchin underpaid the state 126 million rubles and then "laundered" these funds. The court admitted that under the guise of cheap polymers, he imported expensive polystyrene from abroad.

On the eve of the verdict, Oleg Roshchin was arrested by his brother Igor - he was in charge of the transport department in his company. My brother was also accused of smuggling and legalization. Igor Roshchin has melanoma, every three months he underwent an examination, which they cannot do in the pre-trial detention center. In two months he lost 15 kg. At large he has a wife and four children, the youngest is five months old. “What is the point of keeping Igor behind bars until the trial? - Julia, the wife of Oleg Roshchin, is surprised. “We asked for both bail and house arrest, but the investigator said that smuggling was not subject to liberalization, let him sit.”

Smuggling was not included in the Medvedev package, because in most smuggling cases it is not about economic crimes, but about drug smuggling, says Newsweek's interlocutor in the Federal Drug Control Service, and smuggling was forgotten when drafting amendments. However, the fate of Oleg Roshchin can still be made easier: the minimum term for legalization is now seven years, and not ten, which he received under this article among his 18 years of the total term.

FUZZY FORMULATIONS

Investigators grumble: what to do with the raiders, real bandits and professional swindlers who are also trying to benefit from the presidential amendments? Elena G. is accused of fraud. According to investigators, she forged an IOU for € 3.6 million and presented it to the court in order to force her ex-husband to return the money. The deception was revealed, the woman was arrested. “Now her lawyers are “summing up” her crime under an “economic basis”: allegedly this crime was committed in the business sphere,” the investigator explains. The logic of the lawyers is that Elena was a private lawyer, which means that she was engaged in entrepreneurial activities and, in connection with new trends, she should be released. However, the court left her in custody.

Lawyers say: everything is exactly the opposite - it is the security forces that have lobbied for vague formulations and are using them to their advantage in order to continue to keep people in custody. Nowhere is it spelled out what the “sphere of entrepreneurial activity” is, and it is interpreted in a way that is convenient for the investigation, lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov explains.

Vera Trifonova, president of KitElitNedvizhimost, is accused of attempted fraud. The investigation believes that she tried to sell a seat in the Federation Council to Pavel Razumov, Chairman of the Board of JSCB MFT-Bank, for $1.5 million. Since December last year, she has been in jail. Her lawyer believes that she falls under the amendments, “because it was a deal between entrepreneurs,” and she should be released before the trial.

Last week, businesswoman Trifonova was brought to the Moscow Regional Court in a wheelchair. According to the doctors, she can hardly see, her kidney has failed, water has accumulated in her lungs and she needs to undergo hemodialysis three times a week. But the judges left her behind bars for the fourth time. Seeing a seriously ill woman, the doctors of the Mozhaisk SIZO refused to accept her and sent her to the intensive care unit of the city hospital. “So it turns out,” says the lawyer Zherebenkov, “that neither investigators nor judges want to fulfill the liberalization of legislation on economic crimes and President Medvedev’s demand for a humane attitude towards people in pre-trial detention centers.”