Inappropriate persons

The Prosecutor General's Office won a lawsuit against another senior officer of the SKP

Representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office yesterday won an important bureaucratic victory over their colleagues from the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor's Office (SKP). At the request of the department of Yuri Chaika, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (SC) overturned the decisions of the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow and the Moscow City Court, which a year ago declared illegal the dismissal from the prosecutor's office for defamatory reasons of Anatoly Bagmet, who now holds the position of head of the Moscow department of the SKP.

In itself, this process could well be considered a special case of a labor dispute between an official and his superiors. However, in light of the difficult relationship between the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee, this case is of fundamental importance not only for the prosecutor’s office itself, but also, in many ways, for the entire law enforcement system. Moreover, the proceedings in the “Bagmet case” may threaten far-reaching consequences, not only purely operational and personnel, but also procedural.

In fact, after yesterday’s decision of the Supreme Court (it, however, has not yet entered into legal force and will most likely be appealed), it turned out that Mr. Bagmet was fired at one time legally and precisely for defamatory reasons - for violating the norms of the prosecutor’s office ethics. Accordingly, following the logic, his appointment to the last position in the UPC may be considered illegal. As a result, it is theoretically possible to conclude that he illegally worked in this position all the time, that is, he was an “inappropriate person,” simply an outsider who did not have any authority.

If this logical chain is formalized legally - through orders, representations and court decisions, an unprecedented and absurd situation may arise. Formally, there will be grounds for the cancellation of all documents approved and signed by Mr. Bagmet in his position as head of the Moscow department of the UPC. It is difficult to overestimate the consequences of this. In fact, we will talk about the legitimacy of all criminal cases to which Mr. Bagmet “had a hand” in one way or another during his work - and these are hundreds, if not thousands of investigations, the most significant ones - about murders, bribes, etc.

Who needs this and why - we can only guess. Based on the chronicle of the conflict between the Prosecutor General’s Office and the UPC, it can be assumed that no one simply thought about this aspect of yesterday’s proceedings. And, most likely, it arose as a “side effect” from the protracted process of clarifying the relationship between the leadership of the two departments. As is known, the UPC was created in September 2007 as a result of the urgently carried out reform of the Criminal Procedure Code. As a result, the prosecutor's office was deprived of the power to initiate and investigate criminal cases, as well as a significant part of the power to supervise the investigation. The SKP, although formally listed as “under the prosecutor’s office,” is in reality practically an independent department, much more powerful than the Prosecutor General’s Office itself. So, for example, the head of the Investigative Committee, although incidentally, is the Deputy Prosecutor General, but it is he who is authorized to initiate criminal proceedings against the Prosecutor General himself.

The Prosecutor General's Office initially spoke out against such a reform, and after the creation of the UPC, it constantly tried to find flaws in the work of the department, criticizing and challenging certain decisions of the UPC in the most “high-profile” criminal cases. In the end, things got to the point where the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office and the SKP began to sue, trying to prove which of them was “more important.” The version that Mr. Bagmet became an accidental “victim” of this political struggle is supported by the fact that this is not the first such trial.

As Vremya Novostei already reported (see issue dated March 3, 2009 - Ed. ), in February, the Prosecutor General's Office prevailed over the SKP during the Supreme Court hearing the case of another responsible employee of the SKP - the former head of the Investigation Department for the Krasnodar Territory, Alexander Glushchenko. The Prosecutor General's Office, challenging the legality of initiating one minor case, through the court obtained recognition that Mr. Glushchenko was also an “improper person.” This was proven on the basis of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the law “On the Prosecutor’s Office”. As it turned out, during the reform of the Criminal Procedure Code in 2007, some controversial issues were left behind. In particular, the Prosecutor General's Office was able to prove the main thing, apparently from its point of view, that the Prosecutor General has greater powers than the head of the UPC, and the latter is obliged to obey his orders. (In that particular case, it was about the fact that Mr. Glushchenko was appointed to work in the SKP by the head of the department, Alexander Bastrykin, contrary to the order of the Prosecutor General to dismiss him.)

By the way, in the case of Mr. Bagmet, the reason for the investigation was, to put it mildly, not the most fundamental claims of the Prosecutor General's Office against him - the validity of his receipt of the academic degree of associate professor.

As follows from the documents submitted yesterday to the Supreme Court by the parties, on December 10, 2007, Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, by his order, “for violating the oath and committing an offense discrediting the honor of a prosecutor’s employee,” fired Mr. Bagmet, who then served as deputy prosecutor of the Chelyabinsk region. The basis for this was the report of the regional prosecutor, who reported to management that Mr. Bagmet was offered to take the post of head of the capital’s SKP, but an internal check revealed inconsistencies in his biography. So in 2005, in order to receive the scientific title of “Assistant Professor,” Mr. Bagmet submitted to Chelyabinsk State University (CSU) allegedly false extracts from orders stating that he taught at the University of Kazakhstan in 2000-2004. After this, employees of the Prosecutor General's Office flew to Chelyabinsk for an internal check. She established that Mr. Bagmet not only never taught at a university in Kazakhstan, but never left the Russian Federation at all. But, despite this, Mr. Bagmet was awarded the title of Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology.

Also, during the audit, it was revealed that the participants of the meeting of the academic council at ChelSU were held inappropriately, and the authenticity of documents confirming the presence of teaching work experience was checked formally. As a result, the regional prosecutor issued a proposal to eliminate the violations addressed to the rector of ChelSU Andrey Shatin. At the same time, the scientific secretary of the council was brought to disciplinary liability. And on April 17, 2008, the Investigative Committee of the Chelyabinsk Region opened a criminal case, which, however, was soon discontinued.

After the order of the Prosecutor General, Anatoly Bagmet went to Moscow, where he filed a lawsuit against the Prosecutor General's Office for illegal dismissal and reinstatement. The Tverskoy District Court, having considered the case, came to the conclusion that Mr. Bagmet “rightfully received the title of associate professor after conducting the required number of classes,” however, not in Kazakhstan, but at ChelSU. The defendant's representative was unable to prove that in order to obtain an academic title, the plaintiff personally submitted false documents to the university. Moreover, Mr. Bagmet presented a work book in which there is no record that he had ever taught in Kazakhstan, and proved that he had been lecturing at CSU on weekends for several years. As a result, on February 27, the Tverskoy District Court ruled that the confusion in the documents presented to ChelSU during the prosecutor’s audit was “not the plaintiff’s fault” and decided to reinstate him in his position and compensate for damages during his forced absence from the workplace. On the same day, Anatoly Bagmet began to perform his duties. The Prosecutor General's Office filed a cassation appeal with the Presidium of the Moscow City Court, but even here it was defeated. But even before the decision came into force, as it turned out, the Prosecutor General canceled his order to dismiss Deputy Prosecutor Bagmet. On March 28, 2008, he wrote a report to the Prosecutor General about his retirement and, having received compensation of 20 official salaries, stopped working in the prosecutor's office. And on May 8, he was appointed to the post of head of the capital’s UPC.

But recently, the Prosecutor General’s Office suddenly remembered Mr. Bagmet again, and on February 25, the Supreme Court received its supervisory submission on the decisions of the Tver District Court and the Moscow City Court. The first hearing took place on March 12. Mr. Bagmet, who decided to represent his interests personally, immediately challenged the reporting judge, Deputy Chairman of the Judicial Panel for Labor and Social Cases of the Judicial Collegium for Civil Cases of the Supreme Court, Tamara Korzhachkina, explaining that she is “directly or indirectly interested in the outcome of the case”, since She also considered the submission of the Prosecutor General’s Office and decided to reclaim the case and review it in a supervisory manner. “The judge initially stated that I violated the norms of prosecutorial ethics and recognized this as established facts,” said Mr. Bagmet. “The judge expressed her position on the existence of a disciplinary offense, essentially accusing me of moral turpitude.” Mr. Bagmet also filed a motion to postpone the trial, since he “did not have the opportunity to familiarize himself with all the materials of the case.”

Yesterday, Mr. Bagmet asked the court to reject the complaint of the Prosecutor General's Office and the Prosecutor's Office of the Chelyabinsk Region, since, in his opinion, only the Prosecutor General has the right to participate in trials against the heads of investigative bodies. “Moreover, the Prosecutor General himself previously canceled his order to dismiss me, and then accepted my resignation. “I can evaluate this that he actually admitted the absence of an act discrediting me,” Mr. Bagmet said in court. - This whole issue with allegedly falsified documents arose when the head of the UPC, Alexander Bastrykin, invited me to head the UPC department in Moscow. At the same time, Mr. Chaika issued an order not to transfer me to other positions and to conduct an internal audit. They thought that they could give up on Bagmet, but no. I believe that after Chaika signed my retirement report, our labor dispute was over. And I assure you that during my entire service, not a single immoral offense was committed on my part. I didn’t write an application for awarding me a scientific title, that’s what they decided at ChelSU. As soon as I found out why the persecution began against me, I immediately gave my “associate professor” certificate to the university.”

Mr. Bagmet named as the main argument of his position a violation of one of the fundamental principles of legal proceedings - “legal certainty, which presupposes that a decision made by a court and which has entered into force in a civil case cannot be reviewed in a supervisory manner.” “There are exceptions to this rule, but only if serious violations are found,” he said. - But the mere presence of two opinions on the same dispute cannot be considered such. Moreover, at the first instance meeting, the representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office himself renounced his claims, stating that the deputy prosecutor of the Chelyabinsk region performed his duties honestly and conscientiously.”

But Igor Agafonov, a representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office, said: “We categorically disagree with the position of the previous two instances and believe that the court of first instance simply did not correctly interpret the provisions of the law “On the Prosecutor’s Office.” We believe that Bagmet was fired for violating the oath and misconduct discrediting the prosecutor's office. The plaintiff did not find out why he was awarded the scientific title of associate professor, but accepted it and, moreover, received monthly additional payments for almost 2 years. But a prosecutor must value his knowledge, and must also have high moral and ethical principles and not allow violations of current legislation. Therefore, we believe that previous decisions should be reversed.”

After listening to the arguments of the parties, the court decided: “the decision to reinstate Anatoly Bagmet as Deputy Prosecutor of the Chelyabinsk Region is cancelled.” Mr. Bagmet himself does not intend to give up. “I consider the decisions of the Tverskoy Court of Moscow and the Moscow City Court to be legal, but the ruling of the Supreme Court is not,” he said. “I will appeal to the presidium.”

Ekaterina KARACHEVA, Victor PAUKOV