During which the investigation was looking for him

Yesterday, the Nizhny Novgorod regional court continued the trial of former vice-speaker of the legislative assembly Mikhail Dikin and his brother, police lieutenant colonel Alexander Dikin, who are accused of organizing an assassination attempt on the general director of the Capital Nizhny Group of Companies Oleg Sorokin on December 1, 2003. At the meeting, Mikhail Dikin, who had until now refused to answer questions from state prosecutors, testified about his parliamentary activities during the period when the investigation was ongoing. According to the defendant, he decided to testify after the interrogation of his reception secretary, Lydia Kruglova, that took place the day before. The witness stated that from the morning until 14-15 hours on December 8, 2003 (on this day, according to the investigation, the Dikin brothers met with Mikhail Dikin’s security guard Alexander Novoselov in Shcherbinki and explained where to look for the car that was used on December 1, 2003 an attempt was made - Kommersant) her boss was at work. According to the witness, on this day deputies Viktor Portnov and Nikolai Karmanov came into the vice speaker’s office. The witness also said that throughout April 2004, Mikhail Dikin was on vacation. The prosecutor's office immediately pointed out her mistake, showing documents from the legislative assembly according to which the deputy speaker was on vacation from March 29 to April 9.

At yesterday's hearing, Mikhail Dikin said that it was really possible to find him at his workplace in the legislative assembly until noon. The defendant explained Nikolai Karmanov's frequent visits to his office by the fact that at the end of 2003 the deputy had just been elected deputy chairman of the regional parliament and at that moment did not even have his own workplace. According to him, he never had official receptions and met with voters in children's clubs. As the defendant said, he went to one of these meetings in a personal car in the Sormovsky district of Nizhny Novgorod on the evening of December 1, 2003. Mikhail Dikin also stated that he went on vacation in March-April 2004 “due to the established habit of not celebrating his birthday at work”: “I don’t like congratulations, because, as a rule, they congratulated not me, but the position, the official chair.” When the accused's monologue ended, prosecutor Natalya Chekmacheva asked if he would like to answer the prosecution's questions. The defendant traditionally refused.

Then Natalya Chekmacheva filed a motion to show the jury a certificate from the regional parliament about Mikhail Dikin’s vacations for 2004 (according to the prosecutor’s office, during administrative vacations the defendant hid from the investigation) and documents about his official assistants as a deputy of the legislative assembly and the Duma of Nizhny Novgorod. The defense was against granting the motion, insisting that the prosecutor's office was violating the procedure for presenting evidence and was trying to discredit Mikhail Dikin in front of the jury. The presiding judge, Nina Chinyakova, partially granted the request.

As a result, the prosecutor's office read to the jury the names of all seven official and public assistants to the regional parliament deputy and three of his assistants as a city duma deputy. Then a certificate was read out from the personnel department of the regional parliament stating that from March to the end of 2004, Mikhail Dikin was almost constantly first on regular and then on administrative leave, having twice received financial assistance. It turned out that in total the defendant was on vacation for 230 days in 2004.

During the hearings, state prosecutor Chekmacheva asked Mikhail Dikin’s former security guard, Alexander Novoselov, where his boss was on December 8, 2003. She noted that the examination established five connections between the mobile phones of Mikhail Dikin and Alexander Novoselov on that day in the period from 11.32 to 13.52. Alexander Novoselov replied that he had indeed called his boss, but did not know where he was. He also stated that he did not meet with Mikhail Dikin in Shcherbinki.

The process will continue on June 13.

NADEZHDA GONCHAROVA

Andrei Klimentyev was found not to have a criminal record, but was not released from the pre-trial detention center
The Cassation Board of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court partially changed the decision of the Nizhny Novgorod District Court to extend the arrest period for Andrey Klimentyev. He is accused of illegally threshing 200 tons of elite grain from the field of the Sergeevsky state farm (damage in excess of 1.3 million rubles) and fraud (non-return of $50 thousand taken from a business partner). As the businessman’s lawyer Sergei Ostroumov told Kommersant, the cassation instance excluded from the earlier decision the reference to the fact that Andrei Klimentyev had a previous conviction and could continue to engage in criminal activities. The reference to relapse was the only reason on which the Nizhny Novgorod District Court extended Andrey Klimentyev’s period of detention. But, despite the exclusion of this link, the cassation board refused to release the accused from arrest. “Such a half-hearted solution is absolutely incomprehensible to us. When we get acquainted with the reasoning part, then it will become clear what the court referred to by extending the arrest period for our client,” said Mr. Ostroumov.
ROMAN KRYAZHEV

Kommersant (Nizhny Novgorod) No. 104 dated 06/10/2006

Mikhail Dikin responded for vacation