Payment according to quota

The former deputy head of the State Fisheries Committee received six years in prison and a million-dollar lawsuit

The Tverskoy District Court of Moscow yesterday handed down a guilty verdict against the former deputy head of the now abolished State Fisheries Committee, Alexander Tugushev . He received six years in a general regime colony for embezzling $3.7 million received from a Far Eastern fishing company for allocating quotas for catching biological resources. For the same, Tugushev’s assistant Vladimir Chekunov , as well as former deputy head of the administrative and economic department of Russian Railways Andrey Lyskov and ex-head of the non-production department of the Ministry of Property of the Russian Federation Lenar Zinatulin received 5.5 years each. True, all four defendants were acquitted under the article “incitement to give a bribe to an official.” The defendants' lawyers hoped that their clients would be acquitted, and are now planning to appeal the verdict.

The court found that “in September 2003, Tugushev entered into a criminal conspiracy with Chekunov, Lyskov and Zinatulin with the aim of obtaining funds by fraudulent means.” “The defendants persistently persuaded one of the co-owners of the Khabarovsk fishing company Poluks LLC, Sergei Aleksandrov, to give a bribe to Tugushev in the amount of $3.7 million for issuing a five-year quota instead of the three-year one, from 2004 to 2008, for the catch of biological resources with a total volume of 50 thousand tons. “said judge Elena Stashina. Moreover, as the verdict states, all four defendants knew that they would not be able to fulfill this promise, but nevertheless they embezzled the money. And at the end of January 2004, the Poluks company received permission to fish, but not the promised 50 thousand tons, but only 7 thousand tons of biological resources.

As the court found, the money was transferred to officials in parts, from October to December 2003, which is confirmed by the payment scheme drawn up by Tugushev and his accomplices. To do this, Mr. Alexandrov took out a loan from a South Korean company for $4 million. The first installment of $300 thousand was paid by businessman Alexandrov as, as the judge quoted, an “entrance ticket” to the list of reliable companies. Then, $1.5 million was transferred to the account of a Latvian company in one of the banks in Riga from a fishing company in South Korea. “Employees of the Department for Combating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DCOPiT) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, during operational activities, established that the details of this bank, through This tranche was passed on to the victim by the same Zinatulin,” Judge Stashina continued. “And at the end of December, already in Moscow, Alexandrov transferred the remaining $1.9 million in cash into the hands of Zinatulin and Lyskov.” All negotiations, as it was established, were conducted through the commercial representative of Poluks in Moscow, Gleb Chugushevsky.

According to the testimony of the victim businessman Aleksandrov, in January 2004 he became acquainted with official information - the result of the work of the interdepartmental commission of the State Fisheries Committee, from which he realized that he could legally obtain quotas for catching the necessary seafood. Realizing that he had in vain given money to officials for what he could have gotten legally, he turned to Mr. Tugushev with a request to return the money. In response to this, he suggested that the businessman “sell the company” in order to return the loan taken from them to the Koreans. Although, as the judge noted, under the terms of the agreement between the deputy head of the State Fisheries Committee and Alexandrov, the official undertook to return the money if the terms of the deal were not fully fulfilled, which is what happened. It was then that Mr. Alexandrov was forced to go to the police.

DBOPiT detectives wiretapped the suspects' phones and soon recorded a very important conversation between Aleksandrov and Chekunov. During the conversation, the businessman demanded either that he be given the promised quotas or that the money be returned. After deliberation, officials decided to give the money in installments. At first they agreed to return $100 thousand, but they immediately reported that they could not collect this amount, and only gave Alexandrov $70 thousand. There was no more money from them, and they stopped answering phone calls.

None of the defendants admitted guilt, but the court concluded that they “thus want to avoid responsibility for what they did.” “All the evidence in the case fully confirms their guilt,” stated Judge Stashina. -- Therefore, the court sentences Tugushev to six years in prison and imposes a fine of 1 million rubles, Lyskov and Zinatulin - to 5.6 years of imprisonment with a fine of 800 thousand rubles, Chekunov is also sentenced to 5.6 years of imprisonment with the imposition of a fine in the amount of 700 thousand rubles.” Due to the fact that the Poluks company suffered losses from unreceived fishing quotas in the amount of $3.7 million, the court upheld the claim of its management and ruled that the defendants must pay the specified amount “minus $70 thousand, which were returned to the injured party even before the initiation of criminal proceedings.” In addition, Ms. Stashina decided to put up all the seized property of the defendants for auction, and “if these funds are insufficient, money will be collected from the defendants until they are able to cover the entire amount of the claim brought against them.”

After the verdict was announced, Tugushev’s lawyer Alexandra Alitovskaya said: “The court had a specific task - to pronounce a guilty verdict. And all the compelling arguments presented by the defense were excluded only because our evidence broke the entire accusation. We will definitely appeal this verdict."

Ekaterina KARACHEVA