He could go to court for this

Yesterday, the department of the Prosecutor General's Office in the Northwestern Federal District announced that the former vice-governor of St. Petersburg, Viktor Krotov, had been charged with a new version. According to the prosecutor's office, in 2000-2003, Mr. Krotov handled bank loans too freely and entered deliberately false data into the budget execution report for 2000. In 1999, Viktor Krotov, with the rank of vice-governor, headed the city finance committee. In the summer of 2003, the city Legislative Assembly expressed no confidence in him because of the “strange execution of the budget,” and on July 4 of the same year, Mr. Krotov resigned. Soon he became an adviser to the chairman of the board of Bank St. Petersburg, whose vice president is the son of Governor Valentina Matvienko, Sergei.
A criminal case about Vice-Governor Krotov exceeding his powers was initiated in April 2002 by the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Northwestern Federal District, Vladimir Zubrin. According to Mr. Zubrin himself, the main St. Petersburg financier, in violation of the Budget Code, kept St. Petersburg budget accounts in commercial banks and took out loans there on behalf of the administration. True, no charges were brought against Mr. Krotov at that time.
This happened only in March of this year, when the former vice-governor was already working at the St. Petersburg Bank. The prosecutor's office accused him of abuse of power. On October 8, the department of the Prosecutor General's Office in the Northwestern Federal District filed a new charge against Viktor Krotov. This time, to the article of the Criminal Code on abuse of power, articles on abuse of power and official forgery were added. Until yesterday, the Prosecutor General's Office kept everything related to the Krotov case secret, but yesterday made an official statement.
It follows from it that the main complaint against Mr. Krotov remains the same placement of city budget funds in commercial banks, as well as the attraction of commercial loans in 2000-2001, “despite the presence of sufficient city funds in the accounts.” In addition, the former vice-governor is accused of fraud with budget money. For example, one of the loans received for salaries of civil servants was used to pay for road repairs, and funds from the Territorial Road Fund were improperly used to pay off the public debt of St. Petersburg. As a result, in 2000 alone, the city budget was missing 43 million rubles. The bulk of this money, according to investigators, came from the payment of interest on unreasonably attracted bank loans.
As follows from the case materials, the budget accounts of St. Petersburg were placed in seven commercial banks, but the bulk of them were in the accounts of BALTONEXIMBANK. In the same bank, according to investigators, Viktor Krotov’s brother, his children from his first marriage, as well as his common-law wife received preferential consumer loans.
Yesterday, the head of the press service of JSCB BALTINVEST (successor of BALTONEXIM) Konstantin Sidorov told Kommersant: “We consider it wrong to comment on such a complex case at the pre-trial stage.” However, according to Mr. Sidorov, the bank is proud of its “participation in the implementation of many important projects for the city, the usefulness and efficiency of working with the city budget.” About the receipt of preferential loans by the relatives of Viktor Krotov, the bank representative only said that “the bank does not carry out economically damaging and legally prohibited transactions.”
Viktor Krotov himself was still unavailable yesterday, and the St. Petersburg Bank, where he works, refused to comment on the situation, saying that “there is no news there.” However, the department of the Prosecutor General’s Office claims that there is still news: another episode has appeared in the case. According to the investigation, Mr. Krotov included in the report to the governor on the execution of the budget for 2000 deliberately false information about the balances of the Territorial Road Fund (the investigation qualifies this as official forgery). As a result, deputies of the city Legislative Assembly for almost three years refused to approve the report on budget execution for 2000 presented to them, citing the fact that they “do not want to cover up the activities of Viktor Krotov.”
Today, deputies must make a final decision on this matter and either approve the report or record a violation. According to a source in the Legislative Assembly, yesterday’s statement by the Prosecutor General’s Office about Krotov’s case is connected with this.
As Vladimir Goltsmer, senior assistant to the deputy prosecutor general for the Northwestern Federal District, told Kommersant, “the investigator intends to interrogate Viktor Yuryevich at least one more time,” after which he will be able to begin familiarizing himself with the case.
ANDREY TSYGANOV

Newspaper "Kommersant St. Petersburg" No. 210 dated November 10, 2004, p. 4

The lieutenant governor took loans from the wrong people