Translated material
Shy thief
It was “inconvenient” for an official to issue a loan to himself
Former first deputy head of the Vladivostok administration, 56-year-old Vasily Sherengova, will soon appear in court. Yesterday, the prosecutor's office of the Primorsky Territory transferred to court a criminal case against an official accused of exceeding official powers and forgery. According to investigators, he stole 1.6 million rubles from the municipal budget.Mr. Sherengovoy is charged with illegally improving his own living conditions. The investigation has evidence that three years ago, while acting as the head of the city, he illegally bought a 4-room apartment at the expense of the city treasury, although he did not have the right to improve living conditions. To do this, the vice mayor wrote an order to allocate a budget loan to himself. As Mr. Sherengova later explained during interrogation, “it was inconvenient to endorse such a document himself,” so he had to sign for the mayor Yuri Kopylov. The latter at that moment participated in the elections to the regional legislative assembly and was on pre-election leave.
The secret became clear after an audit of the mayor's office by the tax police. Mr. Sherengova was caught almost immediately. A former Marine officer who served in the Pacific Fleet for nearly 30 years was convinced that he was entitled to a budget loan in excess of $50,000, and was very surprised when it was explained to him that this was not the case.
The tax police, which opened a criminal case, issued a motion to remove the vice-mayor from office, but Yuriy Kopylov did not dismiss his deputy, but only temporarily suspended him from office until the end of the investigation. “His guilt has not been proven,” the mayor told reporters at the height of the scandal and, in his defense, constantly emphasized that the criminal prosecution of Sherengovoy “is connected with an ideological campaign against the mayor.”
Indeed, the current investigation is not the first corruption scandal in the Vladivostok mayor’s office since Yuri Kopylov headed it. Last year, another deputy mayor, Valentin Nechaev, was charged with abuses. He even spent some time in a pre-trial detention center as one of the main defendants in a case of fraud in the sale of municipal real estate. More than a hundred buildings were sold at auctions at greatly reduced prices, and this was done, according to investigators, deliberately, for a corresponding bribe from future buyers.
As a result, for example, the Kooperator Primorye store with an area of almost 1.4 thousand square meters. meters was sold for only 16 thousand US dollars, although its market value ranges from 370 to 500 thousand dollars. At the same time, the municipal property management committee published official information about the upcoming auctions among private advertisements in the smallest circulation newspapers.