Translated material
Not by Frenkel alone
A “Turkmen” trace appeared in the murder case of Andrei Kozlov
An unexpected development has emerged in the story of the investigation into the murder of First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation Andrei Kozlov - it is possible that new defendants may soon appear in the case. According to Vremya Novostey, the investigative group of the Prosecutor General’s Office was by no means satisfied with the arrest of the existing accused (as is known, the former head of the capital’s VIP bank Alexey Frenkel was named as the alleged mastermind of the murder of Mr. Kozlov; by the way, just yesterday the Moscow Arbitration Court declared this bank bankrupt ) and now plans to interrogate a number of other people associated with the banking business.Among those who are interested in the investigation into the “Kozlov case,” according to our information, were, in particular, the heroes of another scandalous criminal epic - about the theft and laundering of tens of millions of dollars thatonce disappeared from the Central Bank of Turkmenistan . This is the chairman of the board of directors of the Moscow Industrial Expert Bank (Indexbank) Aisoltan Niyazova , her companion Savely Burshtein and the chairman of the board of the same bank Evgeny Obzhirov. Niyazova and Burshtein have long been wanted in connection with the “Turkmen” case, and now the prosecutor’s office has instructed the police to intensify their search as much as possible. As far as we know, no charges have been brought against Mr. Obzhirov in the “Turkmen” or any other case, but the operatives cannot find him now either. What is the reason for such activity in the investigation of the “Kozlov case”, one can only speculate for now. This may be explained, among other things, by the examination of Mr. Kozlov's personal notes and papers seized from his home and office after the murder. Perhaps the investigation came to the conclusion that Alexey Frenkel was not the only one who ordered the elimination of the deputy chairman of the Central Bank or even acted as an intermediary, or perhaps the prosecutor’s office “found” a completely different trace in this case. But in any case, according to available information, the search for new defendants is connected precisely with those who ordered the murder of Mr. Kozlov. The prosecutor's office has no doubt that the three Ukrainian citizens arrested at the very beginning of the investigation were the perpetrators of the crime.
Andrei Kozlov was shot dead on September 13 last year near the sports complex in Sokolniki, where he was playing football with friends. Two weeks later, the perpetrators of the assassination attempt were arrested - three visitors from the Ukrainian city of Lugansk . In January, the Prosecutor General's Office announced the discovery of the crime and the arrest of its alleged organizer, Alexei Frenkel . At the same time, the prosecutor’s office itself never explained or commented on anything during the investigation, so all the information about what it managed to establish and prove appears either unofficially or from the words of the lawyers of the arrested, who in turn are limited by a subscription to non-disclosure of the secrets of the investigation . According to these data, the picture of the assassination attempt on Andrei Kozlov in the version of the Prosecutor General's Office is as follows. Andrei Kozlov supervised banking supervision at the Central Bank and pursued a very tough policy towards banks that violated anti-money laundering legislation, mercilessly depriving them of their licenses. Among these “offended” was the VIP Bank headed at that time by Mr. Frenkel, which was suspected of illegally cashing out money. First, on Mr. Kozlov’s initiative, the bank was deprived of a number of permits and then its license, and Mr. Frenkel tried to challenge this in court. Since Alexey Frenkel allegedly had other financial projects, then, according to the logic of the investigation, he feared that Andrei Kozlov would continue to “persecute” him, and therefore decided to “eliminate” the principled and intractable deputy chairman of the Central Bank. According to the prosecutor's office, he shared his criminal plan with his acquaintance Liana Askerova, who turned to her businessman friend, a native of Dnepropetrovsk, Boris Shafrai, and he, in turn, passed the order to a friend of the crime boss from Lugansk, Bogdan Pogorzhevsky. The latter, according to investigators, “sent” three killers - Maxim Proglyada, Alexander Belokopytov and Alexey Polovinkin, who eventually shot Andrei Kozlov and confessed to this after his arrest. All the “heroes” of this version were arrested and charged with involvement in the murder of Mr. Kozlov. After this, there was a lull in the history of the “Kozlov case”, since all the accused had apparently already been found, and the investigation, in theory, was only engaged in “consolidating” the evidence.
The Prosecutor General’s Office itself, we repeat, never explained anything, while the lawyers of the detainees said that they themselves didn’t really know anything , since the investigation allegedly created all sorts of obstacles for them in communicating with clients.
However, as a source in law enforcement agencies told our newspaper, last week from the Prosecutor General’s Office, in connection with the “Kozlov case,” all departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs received an oral order to raise all old criminal cases (primarily discontinued or suspended) relating to capital banks and bankers. The first such case, which attracted the attention of detectives, is connected precisely with the theft of “Turkmen millions.”
It began in September 2002 , when it was discovered that several employees of the Central Bank of Turkmenistan, who had access to the international electronic banking payment system SWIFT, “quietly” withdrew large sums from the reserve account of the Central Bank of Turkmenistan at Deutsche Bank,stealing in total about 40 million dollars (by the way, just yesterday, according to Vremya Novostei, former deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Turkmenistan Annadurdy Khodzhiev, one of the accused in the case of the theft of these funds, was detained in Sofia). When the scam was revealed, it turned out that the money was transferred to the accounts of shell companies in different countries, and about $20 million ended up in Moscow. The Turkmen authorities turned to Russian intelligence services for help, who discovered that the stolen millions were cashed out through Indexbank and Russian Depository Bank (RDB) (both banks were soon deprived of their licenses). As part of this criminal case,the head of the RDB, Dmitry Leus, was sentenced to 4 years in prison in 2004, and the leaders of Indexbank, Niyazova and Burshtein, fled from the investigation and were put on the wanted list. Mr. Obzhirov was also interrogated then, but he remained a witness in the case.
In addition, the detectives raised another case that had been collecting dust for three years in the archives of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Central Federal District, in which Obzhirov, Burshtein and Niyazova appeared. It is associated with the banks “Grifon” (the Central Bank revoked its license in October 1999) and “Rezon-Bank” (lost its license in November 1999), which were also suspected of illegally cashing out money and concealing taxes using “bill schemes”. Investigators then estimated the damage from their actions at more than 2 billion rubles.
“Despite the fact that it was possible to collect evidence of the suspects’ guilt, for some reason the case was not allowed to proceed and it was suspended,” our source told Vremya Novostey. - Now they have decided to resume it again, and precisely in connection with the “Kozlov case”. The reason is that the investigative group of the Prosecutor General’s Office, studying the lists of banks deprived of licenses at different times by order of Andrei Kozlov, came to the conclusion that the person involved in these cases may be involved in the murder of the banker.” The investigation, according to our source, has already established that Kozlov back in 1998 “compiled a black list” of approximately 1.5 thousand banks involved in cashing out money. This list included Grifon, Rezon Bank and Indexbank. Mr. Kozlov then left the Central Bank for a while, but the banks, based on his materials, were deprived of their licenses. The bankers, according to the investigation, then resorted to a different tactic - they began to create small banks for a period of 2-3 months specifically for “cashing out” money, and after a series of operations declared themselves bankrupt. After Mr. Kozlov in 2002 returned to work at the Central Bank, he found out from his old “groundwork” that the same financiers were behind these scams. And the latter, according to a source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the end, could decide that it would be easier to “remove” Kozlov than again. come up with something new.
A source in the Prosecutor General’s Office, in turn, also said that the investigation has already accurately established the identities of the organizers of Kozlov’s murder. They, according to our source, are a group of bankers who were “offended” by him at different times. “These people are absolutely confident in their impunity,” the source said. - And the accused Alexey Frenkel is obviously just a pawn in this game. He was simply the first to come to the attention of law enforcement agencies that were vigorously active. And after confessing, the intermediary Liana Askerova retracted her words.”
As a result, according to the source, the investigative team, even after the arrests took place, continued to study all the documents seized from Kozlov’s office and home, including the “black” list of banks. Moreover, near the banks that had already been deprived of their license, according to the source, Kozlov made notes - including whether we are talking about vindictive people, what can be expected from them, etc., and the analysis of this information became the reason for new activity of the investigation. According to our source, Andrei Kozlov himself seemed to initially understand that his strict policy in the field of banking supervision was fraught with very dangerous consequences.