Translated material
In search of the lost
New details have emerged in the case of the illegal sale of confiscated property through the Russian Federal Property Fund
The scandalous investigation into scams involving the sale of illegally seized computer and household equipment from capital firms, in which some officials of the Russian Federal Property Fund (RFFI) and law enforcement officers were involved, received a new continuation. Recently, investigators discovered a batch of this product in a branch of one of the largest retailers in the Russian computer market, ULTRA Electronics - ULTRA-Perm LLC. In addition, as it turned out, the investigation did not have time to bring charges against one of the main suspects - the former prosecutor of the Tushinsky district of Moscow Boris Nersesyan. Dismissed from the prosecutor's office immediately after he was caught in illegal activities, Mr. Nersesyan, after a stay in the hospital, left the capital. Now the operatives do not know his exact location, but presumably the former district prosecutor moved to his homeland, Sakhalin.As the Vremya Novostey newspaper has already reported , a criminal case regarding the illegal sale of confiscated goods was opened by the Moscow prosecutor's office on May 30 of this year based on materials from inspections of a number of other cases investigated by the Moscow district prosecutor's offices. It turned out that in March last year, the Zelenograd prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case regarding the smuggling of a batch of built-in household appliances belonging to Vineta LLC. About 5 thousand units of household appliances were found in the warehouse at 5 Zapadny Proezd. Its owner was unable to provide the necessary documents, and the warehouse was sealed and the goods were seized as evidence. And the Zelenograd prosecutor’s office, instead of giving the goods for safekeeping, sent them directly to the Russian Federal Property Fund for sale. The latter, in turn, transferred the confiscated property to Transit North-South LLC for subsequent sale. This whole procedure took only a few days. And when the owner of the household appliance rushed to the prosecutor's office with all the necessary documents for the product, it had already been sold, and at a price hundreds of times lower than the original cost - the businessman purchased the equipment for $100 million, and the intermediary company sold it for 240 thousand. dollars. The entrepreneur complained to the Moscow prosecutor's office, which entrusted the investigation to the Tushino prosecutor's office.
Investigators discovered two more warehouses with household and computer equipment, which, in the same way, were first seized and then sold under the guise of contraband. Among the victims was Components and Systems LLC, from which operatives seized computer equipment worth about 270 million rubles, and then sold it through the chain through the Russian Federal Property Fund and Ekon+ LLC for 42 million rubles. Some of the goods were later found in the warehouse of one of the largest Russian retailers, ULTRA Electronics. The warehouse was sealed and the goods were confiscated again. True, it was not returned to the owner, since now it is listed as evidence in the case of the sale of confiscated property.
The owners of Components and Systems also complained to the city prosecutor's office, and the latter began to investigate. In May, a case was opened under the Criminal Code articles “misappropriation or embezzlement” and “fraud committed by an organized group on an especially large scale.” The suspects were the heads of intermediary firms that sold illegally confiscated goods - Roman Chubatov, Boris Lisagor and Alexey Fedin. And also three employees of the Department of Economic Crimes of the North-Western District of Moscow, who were also charged with abuse of power. The accused were arrested in June. As a source in law enforcement agencies told Vremya Novostey, the investigation does not yet have enough evidence to prosecute RFFI officials, and in the case they are only listed as witnesses.
Operational support for the investigation of the new case was entrusted to employees of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Central Federal District (GU MVD for the Central Federal District). According to our source, as part of the investigation into the illegal sale of confiscated goods, searches were carried out at the head office of the Russian Federal Property Fund at the end of June. In addition, during the investigation, the fact that the Tushino prosecutor Boris Nersesyan and the investigator for especially important cases (OVD) of this prosecutor’s office Pavel Kirilin were involved in the commission of these crimes came to light. In July of this year, the court allowed them to be held criminally liable for abuse of power causing grave consequences. Investigators believe that Mr. Nersesyan was so carried away by the investigation into the sale of confiscated goods assigned by his superiors that he joined the “business” of his colleagues and personally signed a resolution on the sale of material evidence (household appliances) seized from one of the affected companies.
As our source said, Mr. Nersesyan, who was immediately dismissed from the prosecutor’s office, suddenly fell ill and went to the hospital, and in September, when his health improved, he “hurriedly left Moscow, moving to his homeland Sakhalin.” “We managed to initiate a criminal case against Nersesyan, but we did not go to court with a petition for his arrest. Because of his sudden departure, we were not even able to charge him,” the source lamented. “Therefore, although Nersesyan is a suspect, we cannot formally consider him to have absconded from the investigation and put him on the wanted list.”
In August, the Prosecutor General's Office opened another criminal case against the senior detective of the Department for Combating Organized Crime (UBOP) of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate, Captain Vagan Kasyan. He is suspected of attempting to receive a bribe in the amount of $1.6 million for not prosecuting the head of ULTRA Electronics and for releasing the company's property from seizure.
At the end of October, as Vremya Novostei learned, detectives from the Investigative Directorate (ID) at the Internal Affairs Directorate for the Sverdlovsk District of Perm found laptops, monitors and components in the warehouse of the Perm branch of ULTRA Electronics, which had previously been illegally seized from Components and Systems. According to the source, “it has already been established that this product was stolen in Moscow and then transported to Perm.” “The court granted the investigation’s request to recognize the discovered consignment of goods as evidence in the case, the warehouse was sealed, and the goods were delivered to Moscow,” the source said. “Perhaps the deliveries of goods were regular and carried out at the order of the accused Lisagor and Chubatov.”