| Disgraced security officer punished for state secrets and ammunition The Moscow District Military Court yesterday sentenced lawyer, former KGB of the USSR and FSB of the Russian Federation investigator Mikhail Trepashkin. He was found guilty of disclosing state secrets and storing several cartridges at home, for which he is now ordered to spend 4 years in a penal colony. At the same time, the court retained Mr. Trepashkin’s title and awards, and dropped the charge of abuse of power due to the statute of limitations.
Mr. Trepashkin himself was ready for such an outcome. Even before the trial began, he managed to tell reporters: “I don’t expect anything good. Given the ordered nature of this case, it is not difficult to predict what the verdict will be. The FSB took revenge on me because I collaborated with Sergei Kovalev in the investigation into the circumstances of the bombings of residential buildings in Moscow in 1999.” Previously, he also stated that the FSB did not forgive him for his friendship with former FSB lieutenant colonel Aleksandr Litvinenko, co-author of the book “The FSB Is Exploding Russia,” who later fled to England. After the verdict, the lawyer of the disgraced security officer Valery Glushenkov said: “The prosecution achieved its goal. Trepashkin was not deprived of his awards, but, having been accused of committing a criminal offense, he will no longer be able to practice law.”
In principle, Mr. Trepashkin may soon be released. He has already served 7 months in custody, and 1 day in prison is counted as 3 days in prison. However, Mr. Trepashkin has already promised to appeal the verdict - especially since another trial awaits him soon.
According to the Main Military Prosecutor's Office, in August 2001, Mr. Trepashkin familiarized an outsider, Shebalin (also a former FSB employee), with three documents that contained state secret information about three individuals who collaborated on a confidential basis with the security agencies. In February 2002, Trepashkin handed over to Shebalin for storage four more reports and a prepared certificate on the results of the work in the operational search case, which contained information revealing the plans, status and results of the operational search activities.
According to the prosecution, from 1993 to 1997, the defendant, “having access to documents and information containing state secrets, with the goal of using them for subsequent disclosure, contrary to and to the detriment of the interests of the service, systematically removed official documents, and also secretly systematically copied operational and analytical information from the USS (Office of Internal Security - ed.) onto your personal floppy disks and computer system unit. As the court decided, Trepashkin did all this to achieve the goals of “personal interest” - in particular, to disclose state secrets, file complaints against the actions of FSB officials and to write memoirs.
Among the documents allegedly secretly copied by Trepashkin, the verdict lists 23 protocols of investigative actions in cases involving persons who collaborated with the FSB; list of employees of the 3rd and 5th departments of the CSS of the Federal Grid Company of the Russian Federation; resolutions on initiating and terminating operational inspections.
Mr. Trepashkin did not admit guilt at the trial, stating that he had never been granted access to state secrets, that information about former agents was not a state secret, but an official secret, the disclosure of which would result in disciplinary rather than criminal liability. In fact, as the accused believed, they began to persecute him back in 1996, when, under his leadership, several militants from Salman Raduev’s gang were detained, and then “a command was given from above to release everyone.” As evidence of the legality of his actions, he presented to the court a floppy disk with a file where, among the list of employees of the 3rd and 5th departments, his own official powers were indicated. As for the remaining documents, Mr. Trepashkin claimed that his computer contained a large bank of information about criminal groups, created by him personally.
In addition, during a search of Trepashkin’s apartment, 17 cartridges were found. He himself claimed that the ammunition was planted on him, but the court believed the testimony of witnesses who did not notice anything like that.
While the investigation was ongoing, Mr. Trepashkin was under recognizance not to leave the place, but in October 2003, when traffic police officers checked his car in the Moscow region, an Izh-21 pistol was found. Recently, the prosecutor's office of the city of Dmitrov completed an investigation into this case. “It is clear that where there are cartridges, there is a gun. In order to deprive me of awards and titles, the prosecutor's office needed to accuse me of either committing a serious crime, or prove the repeated commission of the same crime, in this case, illegal possession of weapons and ammunition. At the same time, the pistol was allegedly found under the seat of the car, although an investigative experiment established that it could not fit there,” reasoned Mikhail Trepashkin. Ekaterina BUTORINA |
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