Why the court in the case of the murder of Andrey Kozlov was closed
Frenkel without discount. As soon as at the court hearing in the case of the murder of the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank Andrey Kozlov, it was said: “Bank Discount”, so the judge of the Moscow City Court Natalya Olikhver immediately declared the hearings closed. The leaders of the Bank of Russia and colleagues of the murdered man in court retracted their initial testimony, where they called the situation with the Discount bank the main version of the murder.
The trial of the main accused in the murder of Andrei Kozlov, banker Alexei Frenkel, and six other defendants is now taking place behind closed doors. The formal reason is the threats received by the wife of the former deputy chairman of the Central Bank. Frenkel's defense lawyers are sure of something else: the Discount bank is to blame. “Since the beginning of the court hearings in the Moscow City Court, Andrey Kozlov's wife has never appeared in court. What threats can we talk about? - says defense lawyer Ruslan Koblev in an interview with The New Times. - The process was closed, as the defense, in their questions to the witnesses of the prosecution, tried to voice another version of Kozlov's murder, connected with the Discount bank. The initial testimony of the leaders of the Central Bank, where they unanimously name the bank "Discount" as the most likely version of the murder, the judge forbade to disclose.
Witnesses innumerable
The possible connection between the murder of Andrei Kozlov and the story of the massive withdrawal of money to the West through the Discount and Raiffeisen banks by major Russian officials close to the Kremlin-controlled oil companies and the leadership of the Economic Security Service of the FSB of Russia was first written by The New Times in the spring of 2007. (No. 15 of May 21, 2007). A similar version, in contrast to the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, is held by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor General's Office of Austria, where the criminal case on money laundering through two banks was carefully investigated and already in June 2007 was submitted to a court in Vienna.
Aleksey Frenkel, according to Russian law enforcers, the main customer and organizer of the murder of Andrei Kozlov, filed a petition with a request to return to the criminal case the documents seized from it concerning the Discount bank. Judge Olikhver, according to the already established tradition, refused to satisfy the petition. Recall that the charge against Alexei Frenkel in the premeditated murder of Andrei Kozlov at the pre-trial stage was based on the testimony of one witness - Liana Askerova 1 accused of complicity in organizing the murder. After 2.5 months, Askerova completely retracted her initial testimony, claiming that she had been subjected to psychological and physical pressure. This did not prevent the investigation from sending the case to court.
In the Moscow City Court, according to the defense, the prosecution was mainly based on the testimony of four witnesses - the heads of the Central Bank, Sergei Ignatiev and Viktor Melnikov, and former employees of Frenkel's VIP bank, Yuri Zhigalov and Andrei Ukhabov-Bogoslavsky. “Two witnesses (Ignatiev and Melnikov) actually retracted their initial testimony, which they gave immediately after Kozlov’s death,” lawyer Viktor Parshutkin says in an interview with The New Times. “Two other witnesses had a pronounced dislike for Frenkel, but this did not raise questions from Judge Olikhver.” The former adviser to VIP Bank, Yuri Zhigalov, did have reasons to dislike Frenkel. In the summer of 2006, the bank's video cameras recorded an employee stealing three mobile phones from Frenkel's desk. Zhigalov was later convicted by a world court and fired from the bank. Ukhabov-Bogoslavsky, who also testified against Frenkel, failed shortly before Kozlov's murder to persuade Frenkel to write off his $70,000 debt. But, according to Judge Olikhver, these events cannot testify to the personal hostility of the witnesses Zhigalov and Ukhabov Bogoslavsky towards Frenkel.
Disappeared "Discount"
In their testimony in court, the heads of the Central Bank, Sergei Ignatiev and Viktor Melnikov, did not mention Discount Bank. At the same time, in September 2006, just a few days after the murder of Andrei Kozlov, both bankers named this Russian bank as the main version of the murder. From the testimony of Ignatiev: “I want to express my version of the causes of Kozlov's death. I believe that whoever organized the Discount Bank scheme probably ordered the murder of Kozlov as well.” VIP-bank and the name of Alexei Frenkel did not appear in the bankers' certificates at that time.
Recall, according to the prosecution, “in the period from April 20, 2006 to May 2006, Frenkel A.E. turned to Askerova L.B. with a request to find persons who would have committed the murder of Kozlov ... ”Without specifying the exact time and dates. As The New Times learned, according to a certificate dated May 21, 2007 in the same criminal case No. 18 / 377479-06, the investigation established that surveillance of Kozlov using the information provided by Frenkel began only after June 16, 2006. The investigator insists that surveillance in the area of Andrei Kozlov's dacha was first carried out on July 24, 2006 (volume 39 of the materials of the criminal case), in the area of work (Neglinnaya, 12) - after July 26, 2006 (volume 39), at the place of residence ( Davydovskaya, 3) - from August 4, 2006 (volume 39). The New Times obtained documents detailing all telephone connections at the places of alleged surveillance of Andrei Kozlov. Thus, surveillance of Kozlov at the place of his actual residence began no later than April 4, 2006, that is, two weeks before the alleged moment when Frenkel, according to the prosecution, suggested Askerova to find the killers. Surveillance in the area of Kozlov's work began on May 29, almost a month before the date specified by the investigator. In the dacha area - May 11 (one and a half months before the indicated date).
It turns out that surveillance of the first deputy chairman began long before the main defendant Alexei Frenkel first spoke about premeditated murder. Who could benefit from this? As The New Times wrote (No. 15 of May 21, 2007), at the end of March 2006, the department of the Central Bank of Russia responsible for banking licensing and until September 2006 headed by Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov prepared a document on the possible laundering of funds through Russian and foreign banks by a number of commercial organizations, as well as individuals. The information in the report was taken for verification by the Department of Economic Security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Then Andrei Kozlov first spoke about the bank "Discount". Coincidence or not, after only a few days, he was followed.
According to Frenkel's lawyers, the "discount" version of the murder of Andrei Kozlov, like all other versions, will now not be announced in court. All of them, with the exception of the main version - about Frenkel's guilt - were separated into a separate criminal case on May 21, 2007, the fate of which is currently unknown. Lawyers have no access to the case file.
On March 20, according to Aleksey Frenkel's lawyer Ruslan Koblev, his client stated: "From the materials of the case, I know that other persons, including officials, had much more motives for killing Kozlov." At the same time, Ruslan Koblev said that “Viktor Melnikov was in court yesterday, where he confirmed his testimony, given to him immediately after the murder of Andrei Kozlov, that there were extremely tense relations between the murdered man and the head of the Moscow State Technical University of the Central Bank, Konstantin Shor, since Andrei Kozlov tried to take he has control powers over Moscow banks.” The most important thing Ruslan Koblev called the publicity of Viktor Melnikov's testimony, "in which he called the possible real reason for the murder that immediately before his death, Andrei Kozlov led the revocation of the license from the Discount bank. “A few days before the murder, Andrei Kozlov, according to Viktor Melnikov, managed to arrest more than $1.5 billion on the accounts of Raiffeisenbank. Aleksey Frenkel himself has nothing to do with Discount, and the investigation admits this, ”said Koblev.
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1 Liana Askerova is co-owner of the Trish restaurant in Moscow and president of the Moscow Boxing Promotion Association.
