The criminal case against the former leaders of "New Izvestia" was transferred to the Prosecutor General's Office

The criminal case against the former leaders of the newspaper New Izvestia Igor Golembovsky and Sergey Agafonov was transferred to the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation. This was announced by "Echo of Moscow" by Golembovsky’s lawyer Sergey Grebenshchikov.

“If the Prosecutor General finds the strength to read all 22 volumes of the case, and not formally approach the question, prosecutors will conclude that there are no signs of the corpus delicti in the case,” he said.

In his opinion, the matter in his current form "is not complete and comprehensive." The prosecutor’s office can return it to carry out the investigative actions, which the defense stated in the petitions - interrogations, seizures, examinations, or will terminate the case.

The lawyer Agafonova Sergey Zamshkin, in turn, said that the defense had already filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General about the unreasonable prosecution of journalists to criminal liability.

The conflict in the leadership of the New Izvestia publication arose in mid-February 2003, when the chairman of the board of directors, Oleg Mitvol, who controls the 76% of the publication’s shares, removed Golembovsky’s editor-in-chief and chief editor of the newspaper, referring to violations in financial and economic activities.

In the spring of 2003, the new general director of the publication, Vladimir Sergeyev, made a statement to the investigating authorities with a request to verify the results of the economic activity of his predecessor.

According to the results of the audit on April 7, 2003, the prosecutor's office opened a criminal case against Golembovsky and Agafonov. He is charged with the deliberate bankruptcy of "new news", as well as abuse of authority.

According to journalists' lawyers, Golembovsky and Agafonov became hostages of the situation when, with the help of the criminal process, the dispute between business entities is solved.

“The dispute lies in a purely financial plane,” the lawyers noted, “the investigation has already established that before the events of 2003, the“ new news ”had an extremely deplorable financial situation, and any transactions concluded by Golemps and Agafonov could not lead to bankruptcy, since the enterprise was already on the verge.”

Despite the fact that Golembovsky had the right to financial signature, in fact, all financial and economic operations were performed under the supervision of Oleg Mitvol, said Golempovsky’s lawyer.

Lawyers noted a number of violations during the investigation in the case: in particular, journalists were called up for interrogations only at the final stage of the case.

According to the investigation, the actions of Golembovsky and Agafonov led to a violation of the rights of shareholders. However, according to the defense, there are no interrogations of shareholders, the same Boris Berezovsky, from which it followed that their rights were violated. Meanwhile, a survey of shareholders conducted by defense showed that the actions of the newspaper leadership brought profit.