Translated material
Adventure Toys
Capital investigators are on the trail of the “rattle” mafia
The Main Investigation Department (GIS) of the Moscow City Internal Affairs Directorate sent to the Presnensky and Tverskoy district courts of Moscow the first three of a series of criminal cases initiated as part of a large-scale investigation by the special services into tax fraud with children's toys, which has been ongoing for a year and a half (our newspaper reported on the beginning of this investigation on July 7, 2004 year) . The general directors of three companies will sit in the dock - Ivan Kobzev (ZAP Stalkonstruktsiya LLC), Pavel Lesnikov (Igrushka LLC) and Artem Lyubimov (Dedal LLC). Each of them is charged under Article 159-4 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud committed on a large scale), in addition to this, Lyubimov was charged under Art. 174 (laundering of funds acquired as a result of a crime), and Lesnikov also under Art. 173 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (false entrepreneurship).According to investigators, these three businessmen managed to steal more than 800 million rubles from the state budget. with the help of simple children's toys - rattles, kitchen sets, ice slide boards, bears and other animals. Their companies received this money as a partial refund of value added tax, which is due to manufacturers of children's goods. However, as it turned out during the investigation, in fact, the enterprises of Messrs. Kobzeva, Lesnikova and Lyubimova had nothing to do with the manufacture or at least the trade of toys. They existed only on paper and, again, were engaged only in paperwork - drawing up fictitious contracts, documents about allegedly completed work on the production of those same toys for the sole purpose - to, on the basis of these papers, receive from the state that same VAT, which in fact no one I didn’t pay him.
However, as the State Investigative Directorate admitted, there is no talk of fully uncovering this scam yet. According to the investigation, Kobzev, Lesnikov and Lyubimov were, most likely, only one of the ordinary perpetrators of, without exaggeration, a grandiose and carefully planned and thoughtful fraudulent combination, in which its “authors” involved dozens, if not hundreds of people and enterprises in almost all regions of the country and even abroad. And the money stolen from the state in this scam amounts to many billions of rubles. However, as noted by the State Investigative Committee, they already know the main members of the group that developed and skillfully orchestrated this truly elegant scam. The investigation into the main case of illegal refund of “children’s” VAT continues, and, as employees of the State Investigative Directorate hope, they will soon be able to put the authors of this criminal scheme in the dock.
Plush Intelligence
This scheme was developed, according to investigators, almost immediately after the second part of the Tax Code (TC) came into force in January 2001. Then legislators and the government, for extremely good reasons - to support manufacturers of children's goods and reduce the price of the goods themselves - introduced a clause into the code under which manufacturers of such goods received the right to a refund of part of the VAT paid on the purchase of raw materials for them. But this point, as it turned out, was of interest not only and not so much to “core” enterprises. According to the Office for Combating Tax Crimes (UBNP) of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate, the largest oil, alcohol, and machine-building enterprises have also begun to use this. Thanks to a clever scheme proposed by a group of scammers, they managed, without actually producing toys, to also get on the list of “children’s beneficiaries,” receiving millions of dollars from the treasury. The total damage from this type of fraud, according to investigators, currently amounts to tens of millions of dollars, although these estimates are very rough.
“For the entire existence of the tax police in Moscow, not a single criminal case on illegal VAT refunds has been sent to court,” said Alexander Klevtsov, head of the 6th department of the 2nd ORCh UBNP of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate. - This is despite the fact that annually in Moscow alone about 2.5 billion dollars are reimbursed for VAT, the lion's share of which falls on oil workers and energy workers. Of this same amount, according to our data, more than $600 million is spent through criminal schemes (that is, when it comes to the direct theft of government funds). In the case of the toy business, the enterprises involved in their production, in theory, pay VAT when purchasing raw materials. After all, producers of raw materials, for example plastic, are not entitled to tax breaks and include the tax in the cost of their products. When children's goods have already been manufactured and sold, the manufacturer has the right to demand reimbursement from the state of 10% of the cost of the product - half of the VAT that it paid when purchasing raw materials."
As investigators found out, fraudsters took advantage of this feature of toy production just a few months after the corresponding clause of the Tax Code came into force. Moreover, they did not immediately commit direct theft, but first tested their plan using the example of an unprofitable, but real toy production.
Back in 2001, a certain entrepreneur Zimin purchased 5 tons of padding polyester from South Korea, brought it to Russia, paid customs duties, rented a factory for the production of children's soft toys, hired workers, developed sketches of toys and honestly received various permits from all the necessary authorities - from the sanitary and epidemiological inspection to the tax office. After that, soft bunnies, dogs, elephants, and bear cubs appeared on the Russian market. The scammers did not receive any benefit from this then, but they tested and refined the mechanism of the future scam. “Despite the fact that the production was operating at a loss, as soon as the toys produced were sold through the capital’s markets and stores, the businessman submitted to the tax authority the necessary papers for a VAT refund in the amount of 5 million rubles. This was, of course, a paltry amount for the scammers. But it was after the scammers successfully returned part of the VAT, having checked how this system works, that a real scam worth 1 billion rubles began in Moscow,” says Mr. Klevtsov.
The country needs rattles
According to the investigation, at the beginning of 2003 in the city of Lytkarino (Lyuberetsky district of the Moscow region), a Turkish construction company built a plastic processing plant, Spetsplastic LLC. As soon as the equipment was installed in six workshops, three companies were registered with the capital's tax inspectorates - ZAP Stalkonstruktsiya, Igrushka and Daedalus. In official documents submitted to various authorities, including tax authorities, they were identified as suppliers of raw materials for the manufacture of plastic children's toys - rattles, kitchen sets, ice slide boards, helmets and other children's toy products. At the same time, ZAP Stalkonstruktsiya, Igrushka and Daedalus immediately entered into an agreement with the Lodosservice company to purchase raw materials from it - plastic chips and stabilizers, from which toys were to be produced. In turn, Lodosservice then signed an agreement with the transport company Trade Line for the delivery of raw materials to warehouses.
Then the Danae Torg company was registered with Tax Inspectorate No. 13, whose general director was Vasily Tsvetkov. It was he who concluded agreements with ZAP Stalkonstruktsiya, Igrushka and Daedalus for the production of toys from customer-supplied raw materials. In pursuance of this agreement, Mr. Tsvetkov officially issued documents for renting a workshop at the Lytkarinsky plant, purchasing the missing machines for production, hired workers, and very soon, according to official documents, production began operating.
After the first toys were manufactured, ZAP Stalkonstruktsiya, Igrushka and Dedal entered into an agreement on the sale of goods with the M-Star company, which, in turn, as follows from the documents, sold the goods through wholesalers in the capital markets and shops. Based on this, Messrs. Kobzev, Lesnikov and Lyubimov began to regularly submit documents to the tax inspectorates once a month for a refund of part of the VAT, claiming that they had paid this tax in full when paying for raw materials, transportation costs and, most importantly, the production of toys. As a result, in just four months, more than 800 million rubles were transferred from the treasury to the accounts of the companies ZAP Stalkonstruktsiya, Igrushka and Daedalus.
In principle, the documentary side of the business of these three companies and their demands for refund of part of the VAT looked almost flawless on the surface. However, when Messrs. Kobzev, Lesnikov and Lyubimov brought the next batch of documents for VAT refund to the tax inspectorate; operatives of the capital's UBNP drew attention to a number of strange circumstances.
"Drummers" from Lytkarino
From the documents of these three companies it followed that in just six months, at their order, the Lytkarino plant produced about 15 million sets of certain toys. The police were surprised where, at least theoretically, such a huge amount of children's goods was going, since, according to the State Statistics Committee, the child population in Russia under the age of 15 is only 12 million people. That is, it turned out that the modest and unknown companies “ZAP Stalkonstruktsiya”, “Igrushka” and “Dedalus” on average were supposed to “make happy” almost every Russian child with their products.
The detectives were also suspicious of the surprisingly low selling prices for the products of the Spetsplastic plant - in fact, they were sold at cost, that is, all participants in this “toy” project worked at a loss. The police made inquiries about the companies “ZAP Stalkonstruktsiya”, “Igrushka” and “Dedal” and found out that the staff of all three enterprises consists of only general directors and they do without even the services of accountants. But most importantly, the investigators established that the verification of declarations and VAT refunds by representatives of the tax services were carried out just a couple of weeks after the documents were submitted.
UBNP employees have already begun an official audit of the activities of all companies associated with the Lytkarino plant, the results of which confirmed their suspicions. “We asked the tax authorities for documents submitted by businessmen, but at first they simply refused to provide them to us,” said Mr. Klevtsov. As a result, the operatives had to conduct a series of searches, after which they finally managed to obtain tax returns and financial documentation of the companies. From them it turned out that almost immediately after receiving budget money, ZAP Stalkonstruktsiya, Igrushka and Daedalus transferred them to the accounts of shell companies, which in turn passed millions through a number of banks under fictitious contracts. The latest traces of money transfers were found in the bank OJSC CB Interkhimbank.
“Passing money through the bank, as we found out, cost the criminals approximately 0.8% of the amount. This has not been documented in any way; the percentage, of course, was agreed upon orally. In addition, there is such a thing as “overnight money.” This is done to make it virtually impossible to charge the bank with money laundering or legalization. According to the documents, everything is legal, the money went through the balance, and, therefore, there is no demand from the bank. They cannot be charged with anything illegal,” noted Mr. Klevtsov.
Nevertheless, the fact that the companies ZAP Stalkonstruktsiya, Igrushka and Daedalus were involved in the scam was obvious, and the investigator of the 6th department of the State Investigative Directorate Maxim Dementyev opened a criminal case under the article “fraud”. First of all, the investigators called Messrs. Kobzev, Lyubimov and Lesnikov, but they could not really clarify anything. Businessmen said that some people hired them through job advertisements on the Internet, offering to simply sign ready-made contracts and tax returns for a salary of $500 a month. They did not go into the essence of these documents, and did not have such an opportunity. From time to time, they were simply called by a certain person, whom they knew under a code name, and informed that a courier would approach them with documents on which they needed to put signatures. Moreover, as it turned out, all three businessmen did not know each other at all before communicating with the investigators. This once again confirmed that the whole story with the production of toys in Lytkarino was a fiction, but it turned out to be difficult to prove.
Evaporated toys
As soon as investigators began to take active steps, it was discovered that all the machines had been removed from the plant (only one workshop for processing plastic bottles continued to operate there), and there were no raw materials, no toys, or even samples of them in the warehouses. Vasily Tsvetkov himself could not be found - the head of Danae Torg, who was supposed to manage the production of toys, simply disappeared.
Then the GSU decided to check what cargo was delivered and exported from the Lytkarino plant, since companies, among other things, had to provide the tax inspectorate with invoices indicating the names of drivers, flight numbers, vehicles and loading and unloading points. “We found out that five drivers, citizens of Armenia, allegedly worked for Trade Line,” Mr. Dementyev said. - We sent an operational investigative order to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic, and received an answer that people with the data we provided do not exist at all. In addition, we established that drivers from other transport companies came to Spetsplastic and were supposed to take toys from there to the M-Star warehouse. However, as the delivery drivers testified, in the morning they came to the plant territory, parked their cars there and did not carry out any transportation. And in the evening they were given marked invoices, the drivers got into the car and drove away. And so on for four months. Once, however, they loaded half a car for one driver, but after half an hour, as he told us, all the goods were unloaded back.”
In principle, this confirmed that there had never been any toys in Lytkarino, and, accordingly, no one could sell them. Moreover, no traces of them were found in the warehouse of the M-Star company in the city of Dzerzhinsky, which, as follows from the documents, was supposed to sell them. The rent for the warehouse space was paid regularly by this company, but instead of toys, detectives during the search found only plastic buttons there. However, all this was only indirect evidence. The investigation was never able to find direct evidence that toy production did not exist in Lytkarino and, accordingly, it was all a scam. And according to the law, in court, all doubts of the prosecution are interpreted in favor of the accused.
And then it dawned on the detectives that the data on all employees of the companies who allegedly worked at the machines in Lytkarino should be available in the Pension Fund. After all, if the scammers created a complete “documentary” appearance of production, they were supposed to supposedly solve their social issues. The answer came quickly. The list turned out to be not as large as the investigation expected - only 70 names. The bulk lived in Lytkarino itself, and the remaining 30 “workers” turned out to be residents of the Tula region.
“We sent an investigative team there,” says Mr. Dementyev. - And they established that all these so-called workers were listed only on paper. It turned out that they gave their passports to a local crime boss, a certain Korolev, for a bottle of vodka, and he passed all the data on to Vasily Tsvetkov, the general director of Dunae Torg, for processing.”
As the “Lytkarino workers” told investigators, at the plant, instead of producing toys, they were engaged in painting, washing and cleaning the premises. And then they were taken to Dzerzhinsky to the M-Star warehouse, where they sorted plastic buttons. It was this evidence, obtained bit by bit, that finally confirmed that no toys were actually ever made in Lytkarino, and, accordingly, 800 million rubles. were reimbursed to their “producers” illegally. After this, all three - Ivan Kobzev, Pavel Lesnikov and Artem Lyubimov - were formally charged as perpetrators of fraud operating as part of an organized criminal group.
In addition, during the investigation of the toy production epic in Lytkarino, another criminal case was opened - in connection with the episode of the actual transfer of money to fraudsters from the budget. According to investigators, from the very beginning it was clear that the criminals could not so quickly and easily resolve the issue of compensating small firms for almost a billion rubles without the “protection” of one of the tax authorities. And during a separate inspection, the operatives found out that the head of one of the tax inspectorates, to which ZAP Stalkonstruktsiya, Igrushka and Daedal submitted documents for VAT refund, received a kickback in the amount of 5% of the total amount (1.5 million dollars) and a small mansion in the nearest suburb of Moscow. At the moment, the head of the inspectorate has been removed from his position and is under investigation. His name has not yet been disclosed.
Hoaxers and coordinators
Now, according to the investigation, only one workshop out of six continues to operate at the Spetsplastic plant. And investigators are already sure that this plant was originally built specifically for tax fraud. According to them, in general, the circle of people who invented and developed the scam is already known to them, but the collection of evidence against them is still ongoing. As for Vasily Tsvetkov, who mysteriously disappeared, he, according to the investigation, was one of the technical coordinators of the toy production hoax in Lytkarino and is now wanted. The operatives found out that it was the head of Dunae Torg who drew up the documents that were signed by representatives of all the companies involved in this combination, and which were then presented on their behalf to various official authorities. Also, Vasily Tsvetkov, as investigators believe, led all the accounting (both “black” and “white”) for all transactions with toys. “By the way, we have information that Tsvetkova, as who knew all the organizers and coordinators of the scam in the face, as well as leading all accounting matters, most likely, are no longer alive. But the investigation continues, and we hope that in the near future we will be able to charge the rest of the organized criminal group, ”said Mr. Dementiev.
Lawyer Sergey Zabrebnev, representing the interests of one of the three accused businessmen Artem Lyubimov, told the “News Time” correspondent that he categorically disagree that his client was brought to criminal liability, and insists that neither fraudulent actions, nor even more to legalization He had nothing to do. “My principal is a scientist of one of the Moscow Research Institute,” said Mr. Zabrebnev. - He is completely far from the topic of VAT compensation. And I am confident in his innocence, since he did not realize the nature and consequences of those actions that he was charged with. Even despite the fact that according to the documents he was the director of Daedal LLC and the company was compensated by VAT. After all, if we assume that VAT was illegally paid, then dozens of interested parties participated in this, including government officials, who, like no one else, always realize all responsibility for their actions and their possible consequences. But, as far as I know, none of them are prosecuted and even more so is now in the dock. ”
In turn, the lawyer Kobzev and Lesnikov Rashid Kurmanaev refused to comment, referring to the fact that his statements to the principals before the sentence could be regarded incorrectly. He only noted that his customers during the investigation were partially pleaded, without specifying, however, what exactly in.