Signs of Senator Vavilov

The Supreme Court found elements of a crime in his past

The Supreme Court (SC) yesterday confirmed the decision of its lower court made in mid-January that there were signs of a crime in the actions of Senator Andrei Vavilov . Now this decision has come into force, and bringing the senator to criminal liability is a matter of a few days. According to the Prosecutor General's Office, the former Deputy Minister of Finance and owner of Severnaya Neft, and now a senator from the Penza region, is involved in a ten-year-old fraud in financing the production of MiG aircraft under a contract with India. Actually, the statute of limitations on this case expires in two months - in April. But it is possible that the Prosecutor General’s Office risks not meeting these deadlines for a reason. Investigators may well consider this case only as a reason to deprive Mr. Vavilov of his “inviolable” senatorial status. And then they will be able to remind him of a whole series of more “recent” criminal cases in which he also appeared at one time.

The Prosecutor General's Office has shown increased interest in senators over the past few months. Last summer, the Supreme Court concluded that there were signs of a crime in the actions of the senator from Kalmykia Levon Chakhmakhchyan . He was arrested at the end of January, and last week he was formally charged with grand theft. At the same time, former member of the Federation Council from Bashkortostan, Igor Izmestyev, was also arrested, who is suspected of organizing a contract murder. And immediately after the New Year holidays, the Supreme Court issued another sensational decision on the presence of signs of a crime in the actions of Federation Council member Andrei Vavilov.

As the Vremya Novostey newspaper has already reported , the Prosecutor General’s Office resumed the investigation of the case, which it itself had stopped back in 2000. Then investigators suspected the former Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr. Vavilov, of embezzling $231 million allocated from the budget in 1997 to MAPO MiG for the production of fighter aircraft intended for India. This money, on his order, was transferred to MAPO not directly, but through the purchase of domestic foreign currency loan bonds of the Russian Federation. These bonds were purchased from the MFK bank, where Mr. Vavilov later went to work, and then, after a series of transactions, the securities were resold to third companies that transferred the money abroad. MiG General Director Maxim Tkachev and former commercial director Alexander Bezrukov were charged with committing this crime; Mr. Vavilov served as a witness and was interrogated. However, the Prosecutor General’s Office did not find any corpus delicti in their actions.

The senator and his lawyer considered the fact that the case was reopened to be “unfounded and clearly far-fetched.” In particular, as lawyer Alexander Muranov told Vremya Novostey at the time, his client always acted exclusively in the interests of the country, and in the end he fell victim to someone’s political games. The lawyer seriously hoped that he would be able to overturn the decision of the Supreme Court in the cassation instance, but yesterday the Prosecutor General's Office again gained the upper hand. According to Mr. Muranov, the Prosecutor General's Office will contact the Federation Council in the very next few days to obtain permission to initiate a criminal case. “Until this moment, they do not have the right to take any action - neither interrogate Vavilov, nor conduct searches in his home and office, nor anything else,” the lawyer explained.

Considering that the statute of limitations in the case of the theft of millions allocated to MiG expires in April, it is obvious that the Prosecutor General’s Office will not have time to complete its investigation, transfer it to the court, and the latter will conduct the trial and pronounce a verdict. But perhaps this will open up prospects for investigators to remember something else from Mr. Vavilov’s past.

So, in 2001, he appeared in the scandalous case of the former head of the Main Directorate of the Military Budget and Financing , General Georgy Oleinik , who was accused, among other things, of abuse of power. As the Main Military Prosecutor's Office established, at the end of 1996 and the beginning of 1997, he signed two agreements on the transfer of $450 million allocated for the Ministry of Defense to the accounts of the English company UEI, established by the UES of Ukraine corporation. According to the contract, UEI was supposed to supply construction materials to the Ministry of Defense. But in the end, only a little more than $100 million worth of goods arrived in Russia. Moreover, these 450 million were transferred to Ukraine on behalf of the Russian Ministry of Defense within the framework of a multilateral agreement signed by the then head of Gazprom Rem Vyakhirev, Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Head of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Igor Rodionov, Head of RAO UES of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko and Deputy Minister of Finance Andrei Vavilov.

Under the terms of this agreement, Gazprom, which had tax debts to the Russian budget, took out loans from three banks and paid them off. The Ministry of Finance transferred this money to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation to offset its debt under the National Defense program, and the military, in turn, sent it to UEI, and UES of Ukraine used it to pay for gas with Gazprom, which was able to repay bank loans. Thus, everyone was able to settle their problems except the Ministry of Defense, and General Oleinik turned out to be guilty. At first, the investigation considered Deputy Finance Minister Andrei Vavilov to be the author of this entire monetary scheme, but the Prosecutor General’s Office dropped the case against him. As a result, only General Oleinik was tried. During the trial, he tried to convince the military judges that he could not help but sign the payments because he was carrying out the orders of his minister Rodionov, the instructions of the government and the “urgent requests” of Mr. Vavilov, otherwise he was threatened with resignation. And Mr. Vavilov, in turn, stated that he did not demand anything from the general and in general his duties did not include control over the use of funds. Mr. Oleinik was initially given three years in prison, but then through the Supreme Court he achieved his acquittal. As a result, it turned out that no one answered for the loss of $450 million.

Another incident with Mr. Vavilov happened in January 2004 , when he and his wife went to a ski resort in Aspen (USA) and were unexpectedly detained by the FBI. He was then interrogated, but then released, and he returned safely to Russia. According to some reports, the reason for such close attention to Mr. Vavilov from the American authorities was the investigation into the “case of Pavel Lazarenko,” a Ukrainian ex-prime minister accused of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars through American banks in 1995-1997, that is, in fact, same Russian case of General Oleinik. The Americans were interested in the disappearance of Russian money - $700 million that belonged to Gazprom.

The Prosecutor General's Office can recall another case that was closed relatively recently - in 2004. It concerns the theft of Zarubezhneft assets and the sale of shares of Severnaya Neft , which Mr. Vavilov once headed. Investigators of the Investigative Committee under the Ministry of Internal Affairs drew attention to the fact that when creating Severnaya Neft, Zarubezhneft contributed $5 million to its authorized capital and received 10% of the company’s shares for this. And then Zarubezhneft sold its stake in Severnaya Neft to structures close to Andrei Vavilov for only 400 thousand dollars. Having received a controlling stake in Severnaya Neft, Mr. Vavilov sold it to Rosneft, according to various estimates, already for 300-600 million dollars. However, at that time the official was not listed among the suspects and accused.

Lawyer Alexander Muranov told Vremya Novostei yesterday that he considers the decision of the Supreme Court illegal and will appeal it to the next supervisory authority - the Presidium of the Supreme Court. And the senator himself is still undergoing rehabilitation after a serious illness in foreign hospitals. But he closely monitors what is happening in his homeland and sharply criticizes the prosecutor’s office and the court. “The judges approached the issue formally and did not consider any evidence. It turns out that the judges are in cahoots with the Prosecutor General’s Office,” he told Vremya Novostey yesterday. The senator remains confident that the current criminal case was initiated by those “who want to hang medals on their chests.” “Sooner or later they will be punished for such decisions that do not correspond to their rank and purpose,” Mr. Vavilov noted philosophically. Now his hopes are tied to his colleagues in the Federation Council. “It is unlikely that the Federation Council will follow the lead of the Prosecutor General’s Office. I believe in my colleagues. Maybe not all of them have a legal education, but they know what justice is better than in the Supreme Court itself,” said Andrei Vavilov. Neither the senator himself nor his lawyer wanted to specify which country he is currently in. So if the Prosecutor General's Office gets the opportunity to bring charges against him, then it will most likely have to do it in absentia.

Ekaterina BUTORINA, Yulia MAKSIMOVA