Translated material
The first one went
The Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg has been charged
Yesterday, representatives of the General Prosecutor's Office for the North-Western District brought charges of receiving a large bribe against the Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg, Valery Malyshev. Investigators are not yet talking about the details of this scandalous case. However, this turn of events cannot be called unexpected - Mr. Malyshev appeared in most of the major anti-corruption investigations that were conducted in recent years in the northern capital.Moreover, when last year, during the election campaign, the governor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Yakovlev, managed to reach a compromise with the Kremlin, one of the main conditions for “neutrality” was the elimination of a group of his vice-governors. Valery Malyshev has always been considered the “gray eminence” of the St. Petersburg mayor’s office and at the same time one of the most scandalous political figures in the northern capital. But his name was not on that Kremlin list. In the winter of 1999, Malyshev left the mayor's office - he was elected to the State Duma.
Malyshev preferred the mandate of a deputy to the chair of the vice-governor after his name surfaced in connection with an audit of the expenditure of funds allocated for the construction of the Ice Sports Palace for the 2000 World Hockey Championship. It turned out that this project was presented as a purely commercial one, but part of the money for it came from the reserve fund of the budget of St. Petersburg. Moreover, the way the funds were distributed also raised many questions.
Valery Malyshev first became a defendant in a specific criminal case in 2000, when the Investigative Committee under the Ministry of Internal Affairs became interested in the VIC company, which financed the congress of the “All Russia” movement. This congress was largely organized by Mr. Malyshev, and he was also a member of its organizing committee. Parliamentary immunity helped him then avoid any charges.
However, soon after Vladimir Yakovlev was re-elected as Governor of St. Petersburg, Mr. Malyshev returned to the city administration and began to oversee transport and sports issues. However, almost all of Vladimir Yakovlev’s deputies retained their posts. As one high-ranking Kremlin official said then, “Yakovlev simply cheated everyone.” At first it seemed that the Kremlin, which by that time already employed a fair number of former leaders of the St. Petersburg mayor’s office who knew well the entire “kitchen” of Yakovlev’s rule, had come to terms with the slap in the face received from the head of the “criminal capital of Russia.”
It was not even surprising that Mr. Malyshev, who had returned to work, became a defendant in yet another criminal case. He was involved in abuses in the improvement and road committee. According to investigators, the committee’s structural divisions opened accounts in three St. Petersburg banks and passed money through them without compensation. Promstroybank was also mentioned in this regard. One of the main defendants in this case was the former head of the committee, Alexander Evstrakhin, who, together with Malyshev, was also responsible for holding the World Championship. Moreover, among other things, during this investigation, the vice-governor’s accounts in the PSB were also checked.
And yet the Kremlin, apparently, responded. Yesterday, a special investigative team conducted simultaneous searches in the office, apartment and country house of the vice-governor. Moreover, almost immediately some of the property was seized. Representatives of the prosecutor's office charged Valery Malyshev himself under Part 4 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (receiving a large bribe) and took a written undertaking not to leave the place from the official. Investigators have not yet said what kind of bribe it was, noting only that all investigative actions are being carried out within the framework of criminal case No. 369,206.
However, it is not so important what exactly the number of this criminal case is. Another thing is important - the first portion of materials collected on those close to Vladimir Yakovlev still remaining in their posts has been launched. And the fact that the hero of the first case was the “gray eminence of Smolny” is quite significant. It seems that the Kremlin residents of St. Petersburg have finally decided to clear the northern capital of Vladimir Yakovlev’s associates. The Malyshev case is the first call. There are other criminal cases in which the names of the vice-governors of St. Petersburg come up one way or another. And there it’s not far from the governor himself. It seems that the Kremlin has forgotten nothing and forgiven nothing.