Translated material
Mobile witness
The head of Euroset answered questions from the investigation
The co-owner of one of the largest sellers of cell phones, the Euroset company, Evgeny Chichvarkin, was interrogated yesterday within the walls of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor's Office (SKP). As a witness, he testified in a case of mobile phone smuggling , which has been under investigation for more than three years, as well as in a recently initiated case against employees of his company - vice president for security and legal support Boris Levin and deputy head of the security service Andrei Ermilov . Last week, the Basmanny District Court of Moscow issued a warrant for their arrest on suspicion of kidnapping, extortion of money and arbitrariness against another former employee of the company, freight forwarder Andrei Vlaskin.After the conversation with the investigator, Mr. Chichvarkin did not say what questions he had to answer, explaining that “he did not want to influence in any way the fate of the employees.” In addition, the businessman noted that he signed a non-disclosure agreement regarding the progress of the preliminary investigation.
“I’m trying to convey the pain and resentment of why the employees who legally provide for a large creative company are in prison, while the fraudster is at large, and why the investigation accepted his version,” the businessman explained. At the same time, he noted that, for its part, Euroset is providing the investigation with all the necessary assistance. “I additionally asked the employees to show all documents, appear, work with the investigation,” said Mr. Chichvarkin.
At the same time, the businessman made it clear that the company does not intend to indifferently observe the events taking place around it. According to Mr. Chichvarkin, Euroset intends to submit a request to law enforcement agencies in the near future to find out at what stage of the investigation is the criminal case against Vlaskin, initiated in 2003 for the theft of large quantities of mobile phones worth more than 20 million rubles . In addition, the company is already preparing a lawsuit regarding Vlaskin’s libel against Euroset, which will be filed in court in the near future.
In turn, Mr. Chichvarkin’s lawyer, Yuri Gervis, explained that his client was interrogated by the investigation “exclusively as a witness in the framework of cases of smuggling of mobile phones and the case against Messrs. Levin and Ermilov, however, repeated interrogations as clarifications are not excluded.” According to the defense lawyer, the investigation was mainly interested in the mechanism for supplying cell phones to the Euroset company. “Mr. Chichvarkin did not use Art. 51 of the Constitution (giving the right not to testify against oneself. - Ed. ) and answered all the questions posed by the investigation, as far as his knowledge allowed, Mr. Gervis told Vremya Novostey. - So far, no other investigative actions have been carried out and, as far as I know, there are no plans. As for the criminal case against Vlaskin, it is currently with the investigator of the Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee, but we have not yet gotten acquainted with it, so it is premature to say anything.”
As the Vremya Novostei newspaper has already reported, the scandal with searches at Euroset and the subsequent detention of two top managers of the company - Boris Levin and Andrei Ermilov - flared up on September 2. First, employees of the SKP and the “K” department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs raided the Euroset office at 14 Bumazhny Proezd, where they seized financial information and electronic media in the offices of Mr. Levin and Ermilov, as well as lawyers and security officers of the company. As it turned out, during the search, Mr. Levin was already at the Investigative Committee, where he was summoned for questioning as a witness. The deputy head of the company's security service, Mr. Ermilov, who oversees the Moscow region, was detained in the office immediately after the search and was also taken to the Investigative Committee for Testimony. At the same time, investigators presented orders to carry out investigative actions within the framework of an old criminal case about the smuggling of mobile phones.
It was initiated by the Investigative Committee (IC) under the Ministry of Internal Affairs back in 2005, then suspended, and a few weeks ago, as it turned out, the Investigative Committee had already “reanimated” it. Only the next day, September 3, it became clear that the top managers were detained not on a “smuggling” case, but on a completely different one, related to the events of five years ago. The basis for this was a statement from former Euroset forwarder Andrei Vlaskin, who was summoned to the SKP at the end of August to testify on the newly discovered circumstances of the “smuggling” case.
He said that in 2003 he was caught by the company’s security service in stealing shipments of mobile phones, which caused damage worth 20 million rubles. Euroset management then reported this to law enforcement agencies, who opened a criminal case into the theft. However, the forwarder fled the investigation and was put on the wanted list. But the Euroset security service, according to investigators, found Vlaskin in his native Tambov before the police, brought him to Moscow and rented an apartment for him, where they kept watch around the clock so that he would not run away again. At the same time, during repeated conversations, an agreement was reached that Vlaskin would compensate the company for the damage, after which the statement from the police would be withdrawn. To avoid criminal prosecution, the forwarder sold several cars and an unfinished cottage in the Moscow region, after which Euroset fulfilled its part of the conditions, and the criminal case of phone theft was dropped as a result of a signed settlement agreement.
However, five years later, for some reason, the forwarder decided to “expand” his testimony by writing a statement to the SKP, in which he said that in 2003 he was not only found, but actually kidnapped by Euroset security officers, who extorted money from him for the stolen goods. telephones. As a result, on September 2, the Investigative Committee initiated proceedings against Messrs. Levin and Ermilov have a new case - about kidnapping, extortion and arbitrariness.
Regarding the emergence of this case, Mr. Chichvarkin previously explained that after identifying “a group that committed the thefts of cell phones, an attack was committed on an employee of the Euroset accounting department, Dmitry Kanunnikov, who discovered the thefts.” “Kanunnikov was stabbed,” Mr. Chichvarkin said. — The company’s security service may have committed arbitrariness in relation to Vlaskin, but no one kidnapped him or extorted anything from him. At the beginning of 2004, contacts with him ceased, since there were no complaints from both sides. And suddenly such a turn.”