Translated material
First term
The court commuted the sentence of Boris Berezovsky
Moscow's Savyolovsky Court yesterday handed down the first verdict in one of 11 criminal cases brought in Russia against disgraced oligarch Boris Berezovsky . The court in absentia - in the absence of the accused - found him a fraudster, guilty of theft of about 215 million rubles. from the Aeroflot company, and sentenced to six years in a general regime colony. In addition, Mr. Berezovsky was ordered to return the stolen millions.As judge Igor Sheremetyev clarified, Berezovsky’s sentence will begin to count from the moment of his actual detention. In the meantime, Boris Abramovich lives quietly in the UK, where he long ago received the status of political refugee, and the Russian side has been seeking his extradition for several years. Russian authorities have not given up hope of extraditing Mr Berezovsky for, among other things, attempting to violently seize power in the country and spying for Britain. As the representative of the state prosecution, Alexander Kublyakov, said yesterday, the verdict will give a “real chance” to get the British to extradite the political emigrant, and the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation intends to draw up a new request in the near future.
Berezovsky himself, however, was not afraid of the prosecutor’s threats, once again calling what happened in court a “politicized farce.” Moreover, he noted that he does not intend to seek annulment of the sentence. Meanwhile, the lawyer Alexander Dudkin, hired by the state for the oligarch, approached his work responsibly and after the verdict was announced, he said that he was dissatisfied with the decision, considered his client’s guilt unproven and would file a cassation appeal with higher authorities.
The Aeroflot case was the oldest among the criminal investigations into Mr Berezovsky. It was started back in the 90s. The businessman was accused of illegal entrepreneurship and laundering illegally acquired funds, but very soon the case against him was dropped due to lack of proof of guilt.
The main suspects in the case then were top managers of Aeroflot - former first deputy general director of the company Nikolai Glushkov, deputy general director of marketing Alexander Krasnenker, chief accountant Lidiya Kryzhevskaya and ex-head of CJSC Financial United Corporation (FOK) Roman Sheinin. They were arrested, and Mr. Berezovsky appeared several times for interrogation as a witness. But then he disappeared from the view of the Prosecutor General's Office, and then Berezovsky's role in the case was again revised. The investigation named him as the author of the Aeroflot money theft and money laundering scheme.
According to investigators, in 1996, Boris Berezovsky turned to Georgy Shaposhnikov, who then headed Aeroflot, and advised him to hire Nikolai Glushkov, recommending him as an experienced economist. Glushkov, having taken the position of first deputy general director, proposed creating a single center abroad, where the airline’s foreign exchange earnings would be consolidated, which would significantly increase its income. The role of such a center, at the suggestion of Mr. Glushkov, was to be played by the Swiss company Andava. The co-owners of this company, according to investigators, were Glushkov himself and Berezovsky. However, they withheld information about this.
Glushkov and Krasnenker, according to investigators, insisted that 80 Aeroflot representative offices abroad transfer money to Andava accounts, and they also prepared the necessary payment documents, which were endorsed by Kryzhevskaya. In two years, about $250 million passed through Andava.
The investigation also established that, at the instigation of the suspects, Aeroflot entered into a number of loan agreements with the foreign companies FOK (led by Roman Sheinin) and Grandgland (both subsidiaries of Andava) on extremely unfavorable terms. Under the terms of the deal, if Aeroflot could not pay these loans on time, FOC had the right to write off the amount of the debt, along with penalties and fines, directly from Andava’s accounts. According to the investigation, Aeroflot deliberately did not return part of the money on time, and FOC earned 214.9 million rubles from penalties and fines alone. All funds were then distributed to the suspects' personal foreign accounts.
The airline's top managers were tried twice. According to the first verdict, only Glushkov received a real prison term; the rest were amnestied. The Prosecutor General's Office succeeded in overturning this decision, and the trial resumed. In February 2005, the court dropped the criminal prosecution of Mr. Krasnenker in connection with his death. The remaining suspects were found guilty in April 2006 and sentenced to two years probation. After this, Glushkov left for the UK, where he asked for political asylum.
The criminal investigation against Boris Berezovsky was separated into a separate proceeding. After the case was brought to court, it was decided to consider it in the absence of the accused. Berezovsky forbade his lawyers to participate in the trial, so the state itself provided him with a lawyer, who during the debate insisted on an acquittal. The state prosecution demanded nine years in a general regime colony for Mr. Berezovsky.
By a court decision, Mr. Berezovsky was found guilty of theft in the form of fraud. At the same time, the court excluded the qualification of “theft committed as part of an organized group” from the charges, noting that it was not included in the previously charged charges against Berezovsky’s accomplices. The judge also rejected the clause on the legalization of funds stolen from Aeroflot, calling the distribution of money to the foreign accounts of the defendants “a division of stolen property.” By a court decision, Berezovsky was sentenced to six years in a general regime colony. When imposing the punishment, the court took into account that Mr. Berezovsky had committed a particularly serious crime. As mitigating circumstances, it was noted that the businessman had no previous convictions, had a minor daughter and positive characteristics from all places of work.
At the end of the process, a representative of the Prosecutor General's Office noted that he was pleased with the verdict. Lawyer Alexander Dudkin, in turn, said: “In the case, not a single piece of evidence was presented that my client used at least one ruble from Aeroflot.” According to Mr. Dudkin, the verdict will be appealed, despite the fact that Boris Berezovsky did not contact his lawyer in any way.
Boris Berezovsky himself said yesterday that he does not intend to interfere in any way with the litigation being waged against him in Russia. “If I make this decision, I admit that some legal acts were committed against me, and I don’t like that,” he said. - I don’t see any point in seeking any decisions even in Europe, because everyone understands that in Russia there is no judicial system independent of the executive branch, and in order to prove this again, I don’t want to waste either time or money".