Translated material
Widow's share
The verdict on the appropriation of five gas stations in the capital came into force
The other day, the guilty verdict of the Tagansky District Court of Moscow against the former deputy general director of Transservice A.S. LLC came into force. Svetlana Spirina and former general director of Glavnefteprodukt LLC (GNP) Igor Bazilevsky. The court found them guilty of unauthorized appropriation of five Transservice A.S. gas stations. They were sentenced to correctional labor for two years and one year, respectively, but due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, both were released from this punishment.Employees of the Tagansky police department became interested in the activities of Ms. Spirina and Mr. Bazilevsky back in the fall of 2004. Then the owner of Transservice A.S. approached them with a statement. Vladimir Spirin. From his statement it followed that in 1988, together with his twin brother Alexander, he created the Transservice cooperative. The brothers started their business with one mobile fuel tanker, but soon built several stationary gas stations. In 1992, Alexander married Svetlana Shavorskaya, and after the marriage she took her husband’s surname. In 1995, on the basis of the small enterprise Transservice, the brothers and the third founder created Transservice A.S. LLC. In 1999, Alexander bought out his friend’s share, becoming the owner of 70%, and Vladimir - 30%. In addition, Alexander was appointed general director of the company, and appointed his wife to the position of his deputy. In July of the same year, Alexander died in a plane crash.
Since he did not leave a will, Vladimir and Svetlana decided to divide the business and other property between themselves. At the same time, Vladimir, as the sole founder of the company, appointed himself general director. However, the widow was not going to share and demanded from Vladimir that he give her the company completely. When the businessman refused her, employees of the Central Regional Directorate for Combating Organized Crime (CRUBOP) and SOBR came to the company’s office on Narodnaya, 14. All employees of the company were put on the floor, and Mr. Spirin was handcuffed and thrown a pistol. In addition, the police seized the company's constituent and accounting documents, seals and originals of contracts for the lease of land plots for the development of five gas stations. However, they did not include the money and the data obtained in the search report. The businessman was told that a criminal case had been opened against him for illegal possession of weapons and was sent for questioning. While Mr. Spirin tried to explain to the investigator that the police planted the weapon on him, the documents of Transservice A.S. were confiscated. ended up in Svetlana's hands. She took over the company's office and declared herself acting. general director. The businessman protested this unauthorized appointment by Spirina in court. And on February 22, 2002, the Tagansky court declared Spirina’s order illegal and ordered her to resign from her duties as general director. Then Mr. Spirin, as the sole owner of Transservice A.S. registered its new charter. Later he found out that Spirina submitted information about the company to the tax office with the same details, but with the old charter, where she herself was listed as the general director. This erroneous tax decision was soon overturned. However, Ms. Spirina continued to fight for her inheritance and signed several interest-free loan agreements secured by the company’s property. Under these agreements, she invested more than 3 million rubles. in business development.
In November 2004, the Tagansk prosecutor's office opened a criminal case against Svetlana Spirina under the article "fraud", and it was transferred to the Main Investigation Department (GSU) at the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate. The investigation of this case was stopped and resumed 15 times due to newly discovered circumstances, until in 2006 it fell into the hands of the senior investigator of the 6th department of the Main Investigation Department, Major of Justice Viktor Konovalov. Then another person involved in the case appeared - Igor Bazilevsky, Spirina’s second husband.
The investigation found that after the Khimki court refused to recognize the widow’s marital and inherited share in the capital, she did not calm down. And in 2005, her sister registered GNP LLC, of which Bazilevsky became the general director. In addition, Spirina also appointed him first deputy general director of Transservice A.S. And then she demanded that he repay the debt under those same loan agreements. And Bazilevsky, in payment of this debt, handed over to her five gas stations, which he then himself put on the balance sheet of GNP, of which he was the general director, and at the same time signed a gas station lease agreement with Spirina with the right to subsequently buy them out until 2015. Soon the investigation had to be suspended, since the accused fled after the first interrogation and were put on the wanted list. Bazilevsky was caught and arrested at the end of 2006. Spirina was detained at the beginning of 2007, she was also arrested. She refused to testify.
“When investigating this case, we came across a classic scheme for the seizure of the property of a legal entity by third parties using loan agreements secured by property and taking over the rights to the share of an LLC, which provides grounds for a change in the company’s management,” investigator Konovalov told Vremya Novostei. “Unfortunately, these documents are often accepted by the courts when considering civil proceedings, which allows fraudsters to avoid criminal liability.”
During the hearings in the Tagansky Court, the article “fraud” was reclassified as arbitrariness. “There are no signs of fraud in the actions of Spirina and Bazilevsky, since they did not transfer the property of Transservice A.S. for free for selfish purposes.” in their favor by deception, but acted without permission solely for the purpose of exercising Spirina’s supposed right to this property, since she was the heir of the first priority,” the court’s verdict says. The court also found that Spirina was indeed, during the life of her first husband, “appointed to the position of general director of the company and she was entrusted with registering changes in the constituent documents.” The court sentenced Spirina and Bazilevsky to correctional labor. However, due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution, they were released from serving their sentences.
The criminal case against Vladimir Spirin for illegal possession of weapons was dropped due to the lack of corpus delicti. But the policemen themselves who initiated it were convicted. These are Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Ignatov, operatives Sergei Zolotovsky and Vitaly Anisov, his friend from the MUR Mikhail Mikaelyan and two civilian acquaintances of detectives who acted as witnesses in all “police raids on businessmen” - Alexander Sidorov and Evgeniy Cheremnykh. Their case was considered behind closed doors by the Moscow City Court in 2003, and not only in connection with the planting of weapons on Spirin. It has been under investigation since the spring of 2001, when Ignatov began extorting money from the son of the famous figure skating coach Elena Tchaikovskaya for dropping the criminal case against her son. During the investigation, the capital's prosecutor's office charged the detectives with several more episodes. According to investigators, back in the late 90s, Mr. Ignatov and his colleagues illegally detained the head of one of the private security companies, whose wife had a financial conflict with a policeman’s girlfriend, and then the detectives brutally beat the guards. They were also charged with several cases of planting weapons and ammunition on well-known businessmen. As a result, the court found Mr. Ignatov guilty only of abuse of power, for which he received three years in prison (he had already spent more than two years under arrest). Zolotovsky and Anisov received three years' probation each, Mikaelyan - four years' probation, and Sidorov and Cheremnykh - five and six years in prison, respectively, for fraud. All of them have now been released.