Borodin's accuser was banned from traveling abroad
The Russian Prosecutor General's Office again urgently needed Swiss help in investigating two high-profile cases: the siphoning of Aeroflot money in the Andava company and abuses in the management of the affairs of the President of the Russian Federation (the so-called Mabetex case). Yesterday, the investigator in the Aeroflot case, Nikolai Volkov, flew to Switzerland. And the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office, who was removed from the Mabetex case the day before, was not allowed abroad by the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Thus, according to Chuglazov, all pre-planned interrogations with his participation were disrupted.

Carla del Ponte's successor as Swiss prosecutor, Felix Benziger, was actively preparing for the official visit of two Russian investigators. In particular, he did everything to organize the upcoming interrogations of employees of Banca del Gottardo, which, according to investigators, contained accounts of high-ranking Russian officials. The head of the investigation team in the Mabetex case, Georgy Chuglazov, was supposed to personally participate in the interrogations.
However, literally the day before the visit, by order of Vladimir Minaev, head of the Main Investigation Department of the Prosecutor General's Office, Chuglazov was removed from the case (Kommersant reported this on Saturday). And yesterday the leadership of the Prosecutor General’s Office ordered him to abandon his planned visit to Switzerland. Chuglazov believes that due to the cancellation of the trip, “the matter will suffer,” which, in his assessment, “has reached its climax.” This means that the investigation is ready to bring specific charges against the officials who benefited from the Mabetex company.
Chuglazov also stated that 90% of what has been published recently in the press regarding the Mabetex case is true and, moreover, documented. At the same time, the main witness in the case, Pavel Borodin, continues to claim that he did not and does not have accounts “neither in Geneva, nor in Lugano, nor in other places.” However, Borodin does not exclude the possibility that someone opened such accounts on his behalf. He considers as evidence of his innocence the fact that the Prosecutor General’s Office did not show him a single account statement during the six-month investigation. However, Borodin was dissuaded from suing the media that defamed him by his lawyer, Genrikh Padva, who believes that the judicial mechanism for protecting honor and dignity in our country has not been worked out.
Georgy Chuglazov was supposed to be accompanied on his trip to Switzerland by the investigator in the Aeroflot case, Nikolai Volkov, who went there yesterday morning in splendid isolation. Let us recall that a few months ago Volkov brought charges of illegal business and money laundering against Boris Berezovsky, as well as the suspended vice-president of Aeroflot, Alexander Krasnenker, and the former deputy general director of this company, Nikolai Glushkov. The Prosecutor General's Office put all three on the wanted list, but as soon as they returned to the country, the investigation lost interest in them. Yesterday, lawyers for entrepreneurs complained to a Kommersant correspondent about their “professional downtime.”
Investigator Volkov explains the delay in the case by waiting from Switzerland for original documents incriminating all three of the incriminated crimes. The prosecutor's office already has copies of these documents, and the Swiss sent them in the form of a small brochure, which cannot be included in the case. It seems that the wait for the originals was too long, so Volkov decided to fly to Switzerland himself. In this case, the leadership of the Prosecutor General's Office did not interfere and even gave him modest travel allowances (the investigator will not live abroad at Swiss expense).
It is curious that when Volkov left, he named among his foreign plans participation in hearings of the Swiss Federal Court on complaints from lawyers of persons involved in the Aeroflot case. However, defense attorneys Boris Kuznetsov and Anatoly Kucherena, representing the accused Krasnenker and Glushkov, respectively, assured the Kommersant correspondent that they did not file any complaints with the Swiss court, since their clients do not have bank accounts allegedly subject to disclosure in this country. Berezovsky's defense attorney, Henry Reznik, made the following statement in this regard: “I consider it professionally unworthy to comment on circumstances outside the scope of the investigation of the case. Unlike Mr. Volkov, I have never been and never will be a master of the conversational genre in a specific case.”
Nikolai Volkov is expected to return from Switzerland in a week. Kommersant will monitor developments.

EKATERINA Kommersant-ZAPODINSKAYA

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 156 dated 08/31/1999, p. 2

Authors:

Ekaterina Zapodinskaya