Landing according to the rules

Strasbourg refused to recognize Andrei Klimentyev as a victim of injustice

The notorious businessman from Nizhny Novgorod Andrei Klimentyev, famous for his numerous criminal cases and political claims to the posts of deputy, mayor and governor, suffered another defeat yesterday. This time he received a rebuff from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which refused to satisfy his complaint about the right to a fair trial being violated by the Russian authorities.

Andrei Klimentyev became famous back in the mid-90s, when he led his election campaign for the post of mayor of Nizhny directly from the walls of a pre-trial detention center. At the same time, Klimentyev managed to win the elections and even be released, but he was not allowed to enjoy his triumph for a long time. On April 1, 1997, the local election commission annulled the election results, and the next day, during a hearing in the businessman's case, he was again taken into custody. Then Klimentyev was accused of embezzlement, embezzlement, bribery and failure to return foreign currency funds from abroad, for which at the end of May 1998 he received six years in prison. The Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court found him guilty of stealing a loan from the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation of $30 million issued to his Oka shipbuilding plant. Moreover, this was already the second sentence. The first, handed down a year earlier and subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court, was milder - only 1.5 years in prison with partial confiscation.

Mr. Klimentyev was fortunate to be released early in 2000 and immediately resumed his political career, running for governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region in January 2001 but failing to make it to the second round. Two years later, the businessman again proposed himself for the post of mayor of Nizhny Novgorod, but he later withdrew his candidacy due to accusations of forging voter signatures. Already last year, Mr. Klimentyev again decided to participate in the elections - this time to the legislative assembly of the Nizhny Novgorod region. However, in January of this year, instead of being a deputy, he again ended up in a pre-trial detention center. This time he was accused of banal robbery. According to investigators, Mr. Klimentyev arbitrarily organized the grain harvest from the fields of another enterprise, appropriating the products (the Vremya Novostey newspaper reported on this in its issue dated January 23).

The Nizhny Novgorod businessman never gave up trying to have the sentences passed against him declared illegal, filing all possible complaints and protests. Having failed in his homeland, in 1999 he filed a complaint about a violation of his right to a fair trial at the ECHR. In it, Mr. Klimentyev, in particular, indicated that during the trial of his case of theft of a loan from the Ministry of Finance, he was denied interrogation as witnesses of the governor, prosecutor and other regional officials. In addition, according to him, the court accepted as evidence the written testimony of several witnesses given during the preliminary investigation, and did not listen to their oral statements during the trial. In particular, two of them were Norwegian citizens, and they were interrogated by the local police. They did not appear at the trial, and the accused complained that he was deprived of the opportunity to ask them questions. The same problem arose with a German witness. Klimentyev also complained that some documents were not translated from English into Russian on time, he was informed of the results of the examinations late, and all this allegedly deprived him of the right to defense.

However, the ECtHR did not find any grounds to believe that the right to a fair trial was violated in the Klimentyev case. In particular, his decision states that oral examination of witnesses in the trial, although desirable, is not always mandatory. Thus, foreign citizens, for example, could not be forced to appear at the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court if they themselves did not want to do so voluntarily. The ECHR noted that the defense had the opportunity to present its counter-arguments to the written testimony of the witnesses, which they did. In addition, the correctness of their words was confirmed by the testimony of many other witnesses questioned in court.

“A quick glance at the text of the European Court’s ruling allows us to draw a conclusion about the objective and balanced approach of the judges of the Strasbourg Court who considered this case,” Pavel Laptev, the Russian Commissioner at the ECHR, told Vremya Novostey. - The resolution is very interesting. It is distinguished by a thorough and high-quality legal justification for the decision taken.”

Ekaterina BUTORINA