Stage for ex-governor

The fate of the former head of the Nenets District will be decided by the district court in Arkhangelsk

The Prosecutor General's Office yesterday announced the completion of the investigation into the criminal case against the ex-governor of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO) Alexei Barinov and his two alleged accomplices - former deputy director and chief accountant of Arkhangelskgeoldobycha OJSC Sergei Gavrilov and Sergei Goryaev. Now their fate depends on the Oktyabrsky District Court of Arkhangelsk, where the investigation materials have been sent for consideration on the merits of the case. The prosecutor's office accuses the former governor of exceeding official powers, misappropriation of budget funds and misappropriation of entrusted property in the amount of about 103 million rubles. as part of an organized group. Two other alleged members of this group are accused of theft and money laundering, as well as fraud. True, the damage they caused is estimated by the investigation to be only 19 million rubles. All three were arrested almost immediately after the initiation of the criminal case and sent to the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center; now they are awaiting transfer to the Arkhangelsk detention center.

A criminal case against Governor Barinov was initiated in May 2006. Formally, the basis for it was the materials of the Audit Chamber's audit of the targeted expenditure of federal budget funds allocated to the Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Informally, as some observers believed then, the head of the Nenets Okrug paid for his stubbornness, expressed in his reluctance to integrate into the “vertical of power.” Initially, he had a tense relationship with the presidential envoy for the Northwestern Federal District, Ilya Klebanov. In addition, in the spring of 2006, the NAO authorities refused to obey the Speaker of the Federation Council Sergei Mironov, who demanded the recall of Nenets senator Alexander Sabadash. The last one had to leave the Federation Council then, but he avoided criminal prosecution, but the governor himself ended up in prison.

Already during the investigation of the case against Mr. Barinov for misappropriation of funds, it was combined with another criminal case initiated back in 2001 by the prosecutor's office of the Arkhangelsk region on the theft of property of OJSC Arkhangelskgeoldobycha (a subsidiary of OJSC LUKOIL). Alexey Barinov headed this structure in 1998-2003.

The governor was detained on May 23, and a few days later the same fate befell Sergei Gavrilov and Sergei Goryaev. All of them immediately refused to give any testimony, citing Art. 51 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. After this, President Putin signed a decree depriving Mr. Barinov of his powers as head of the region due to “loss of trust.”

The prosecutor's office accuses the former governor of ten criminal episodes, seven of which relate to his work as general director of Arkhangelskgeoldobycha, and three are directly related to his work as governor of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug. According to the investigation, Barinov, Gavrilov and Goryaev in 1999-2000, as private individuals, purchased from Arkhangelskgeoldobycha, in which they then worked, several apartments and garages worth 5 million rubles, “paying” for them with false acceptance certificates. transfer of bills of exchange to JSCB Fondservicebank. In addition, as follows from the case materials, in 1999 the defendants entered into a fictitious agreement with BFK-Invest LLC to carry out geological exploration and seismic work in the Medynskaya area in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug. For this transaction, Arkhangelskgeoldobycha transferred 13 million rubles to the account of BFK-Invest. But, as the investigation established, in fact, BFC-Invest did not perform any work, but was used to cash out money through front companies. Also, according to the investigation, at the beginning of 2005, Mr. Barinov, as the head of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, entered into a loan agreement with LUKOIL-North, which led to debt obligations not provided for by the regional budget. The prosecutor's office qualified these actions as misappropriation of budget funds and abuse of authority.

Mr. Barinov himself previously called the charges brought against him “commercial sabotage,” declaring his innocence both in the theft of Arkhangelskgeoldobycha property and in bill fraud. Yesterday, his lawyer Vsevolod Yesakov, having learned that the Prosecutor General’s Office had already sent the case to court, urgently left for Moscow, where today he should receive the indictment and also meet with his client. “My client does not plead guilty,” Mr. Yesakov told Vremya Novostei. - And since he did not give any testimony during the investigation, not trusting the investigation, he will give it during the trial. I’m sure we will achieve justice in court.”

Ekaterina KARACHEVA