Translated material
"Three whale" opera
The scandalous case of furniture smuggling was returned to Naro-Fominsk
The scandalous criminal case of large-scale smuggling of luxury furniture , sold through the trading houses “Three Whales” and “Grand”, will still be considered in the court of the Moscow region city of Naro-Fominsk. This decision was made yesterday by the Moscow Regional Court, having considered the cassation submission of the Prosecutor General's Office against the decision of the Naro-Fominsk court to transfer the case to one of the district courts of St. Petersburg.The defense of the accused actively sought to hold the trial there, insisting that the judicial investigation should take place in the place where the crimes charged against the defendants were committed (the furniture was imported into the territory of the Russian Federation through St. Petersburg). However, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation demanded that the case of furniture smuggling be considered in the Moscow region (where the furniture underwent customs clearance) and filed a protest with the Moscow Regional Court.
Yesterday he satisfied the cassation submission of the Prosecutor General's Office, and 250 volumes of the “furniture case” were again sent to Naro-Fominsk on Thursday evening. There, nine people will be in the dock, including the former de facto head of the Grand and Three Whales shopping centers, Sergei Zuev. According to the investigation, furniture was supplied to his stores across the border using false declarations. The amount of unpaid customs duties, according to the investigation, amounted to more than 20 million rubles, although initially law enforcement agencies estimated the damage at tens of millions of dollars. In addition to smuggling, some of the defendants are charged with illegal legalization of property and evasion of duties.
The “three-whale” case - involving the smuggling of expensive furniture - began to become overgrown with scandals and intrigues from the very start of the investigation, which began in the summer of 2000 by the State Customs Committee (SCC, now the Federal Customs Service) and the Investigative Committee (IC) under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Then customs seized a large batch of imported luxury furniture intended for sale in the Three Whales and Grand shopping centers. According to the State Customs Committee, it was imported into Russia illegally, using front companies (“League Mars”, “Bastion”, “Seftrans”, “Alliance-95”, “Alliance-96”, etc., associated with one of owners of “Three Whales” and “Grand” Sergei Zuev), using forged documents, with multiple understatement of the real value in the declarations. Customs officers filed claims against League Mars and Bastion for $2.5 million. The money in exchange for the removal of seizure from the furniture was contributed by the owner of Three Whales and Grand, Sergei Zuev, who was formally not related to the supplying companies. Then he complained about the progress of the investigation to the Prosecutor General's Office, which in November of the same year took the case into its proceedings, and a few months later announced its closure altogether for lack of evidence of a crime.
Instead, prosecutors accused law enforcement officials who began investigating the “three-pillar” case of malfeasance - Investigative Committee investigator Pavel Zaitsev, head of the customs inspection of the State Customs Committee Alexander Volkov and deputy head of the customs investigation and inquiry department of the State Customs Committee Marat Fayzulin. (Later, customs officers Volkov and Faizulin were completely acquitted. Investigator Zaitsev was tried twice. In 2002, he was completely acquitted. But after the Supreme Court, on the proposal of the Prosecutor General’s Office, overturned the acquittal, the trial, which began anew, considered Mr. Zaitsev’s guilt proven and sentenced him to two suspended for years.)
The conflict between the law enforcement agencies took a new turn in 2002, when, at the insistence of State Duma deputies, the Prosecutor General's Office was forced to resume the investigation into the case of furniture smuggling. On the personal initiative of President Putin, an “independent” investigator from the Leningrad Prosecutor’s Office, Vladimir Loskutov, was invited to conduct the investigation. For a long time even after this, the case did not move forward, but in 2006, immediately after Vladimir Ustinov left the post of Prosecutor General, five accused were arrested at once - Sergei Zuev and four employees of front companies through which, according to investigators, supplies were carried out furniture. In addition, it was officially announced that the participants in the furniture scam had “major connections in law enforcement agencies that hindered the investigation.” Soon after this, almost two dozen high-ranking officials from the FSB, the prosecutor's office and the Federal Customs Service lost their posts, but the specific names of those “exposed” were not officially named.
In December 2007, investigator Loskutov announced the completion of the investigation and the transfer of the case to the Naro-Fominsk court, after which a new intrigue began to unfold. On January 28, 2008, the Naro-Fominsk court granted the motion of the defense of the accused and sent the case for consideration to the Kirov Court of St. Petersburg. Such a decision did not satisfy the Prosecutor General’s Office, which believed that the hearings should take place in the Moscow region, where the Selyatinsky temporary storage warehouses are located, where smuggled goods were received. The Prosecutor General's Office filed a cassation appeal with the Moscow Regional Court, which satisfied it, again transferring the case materials to Naro-Fominsk for consideration of the case by the same court.
Yesterday, only the operative part of the decision was read out in the Moscow Regional Court, and the reasons for the cancellation of the previous decision are not yet known. “It is absolutely unclear to me what the court was guided by,” noted Sergei Zuev’s lawyer Kirill Polishchuk, saying that the defenders intend to file a cassation appeal with the supervisory authority. In addition, Mr. Polishchuk said that at the next court hearing in Naro-Fominsk, lawyers will file several petitions at once. Firstly, they intend to find out the fate of the furniture removed from shopping malls in 2001. Along the way, 50 loaded trucks, according to the lawyer, “got lost.” Grishnov, an employee of the Central Operational Customs, was appointed responsible for the removal of furniture from Three Whales. A criminal case was opened regarding the loss under the article “negligence”, but its fate is still unknown to the defense. The lawyers also plan to file a petition to initiate a criminal investigation into the illegal, in their opinion, sale of material evidence, the same expensive furniture seized in “Three Whales” during the first searches.
Hearings on the “three-pillar” case in Naro-Fominsk, according to Kirill Polishchuk, will probably begin at the end of April.