Translated material
Money down the drain
Rosrybolovstvo official shared bribe with passers-by
The Zamoskvoretsky Court of Moscow on Friday issued a warrant for the arrest of two high-ranking employees of Rosrybolovstvo, who were detained on Thursday while receiving a large bribe. The operation to expose them, which took place near their place of work on the Warsaw Highway, ended in an unprecedented incident. Seeing the operatives, one of the officials, who received 10 million rubles from the businessman, tried to escape, but got stuck in a traffic jam. Realizing that he would not be able to escape the pursuit, the suspect ordered his driver to shake out all the money directly onto the roadway.While law enforcement officers organized a cordon around the banknotes scattered on the road, some of them - about a million rubles - became the prey of random passers-by and motorists. The SKP, concerned about the increasing frequency of corruption scandals in Rosrybolovstvo, for its part promised to send a report to the leadership of the department so that such crimes do not become systemic there.
As the SKP reported, the head of the department of state control, supervision and protection of water and biological resources and their habitats of the Moscow-Oka territorial administration of Rosrybolovstvo, Roman Postnikov, and his deputy Boris Simonov, in March 2010, “entered into an unofficial relationship” with the general director of the company “ Lucia+", better known as the Moscow region paid fishing club "Golden Carp". At the beginning of this year, during an inspection, officials discovered that an agreement for the use of fishing grounds in the Moscow region was concluded by the company with the Federal State Institution Mosrybvod in 2006, but since then the procedure for providing services in this area has changed. The entrepreneurs were supposed to re-issue the documents, but did not do so, and the head of the department, who discovered the violation, threatened them with termination of the contract, which, according to him, also threatened the company with serious penalties.
However, for 10 million rubles. officials, according to investigators, promised the merchants not only to stop the inspection by signing all the necessary acts, but also to falsify the outdated permitting documentation the company had, signing new papers retroactively, as if even before the changes to the law came into force.
After several meetings at which Lucia+ CEO Vladimir Petrushin and officials discussed options for the deal, the entrepreneur finally turned to law enforcement agencies. It was decided to detain officials at the moment of transferring the money. According to the investigation, on June 24, Mr. Postnikov arrived at Zolotoy Sazan, located in the Podolsk region, and handed over falsified contracts to Mr. Petrushin. After this, the businessman called his partner, who at that moment was at the officials’ office on Varshavskoe Highway, and the businessman in his car handed over the money to Mr. Simonov. After this, the deputy head of the department got into his jeep and tried to leave, but his car was blocked by FSB officers.
The official tried to break through and, having rammed one of the parked cars, was still able to taxi onto the Varshavskoye Highway, but immediately got stuck in a traffic jam. Realizing that the operatives would catch up with him in a few minutes, Mr. Simonov, according to the Investigative Committee, decided to get rid of the evidence and ordered the driver to shake the money he had just received out of the bag out the window. Five-thousand-dollar bills scattered along the road, and traffic police officers had to urgently block a section of the highway to collect the money. However, when the banknotes were collected, it turned out that about a million rubles were missing from the bribe handed over to the official. Meanwhile, the official himself got out of the car and surrendered to the operatives who arrived in time. Around the same time, his boss was also detained.
It is noteworthy that Mr. Postnikov, who previously worked in the Department of Internal Affairs of Podolsk and the Podolsk region of the Moscow region, already came to the attention of law enforcement agencies in July last year for illegal fishing with nets. Then, after a complaint from fishermen, employees of the Krasnoselsky village police department of the Podolsk region convicted the official and his acquaintances of illegal fishing with nets. Mr. Postnikov himself, who then held the post of head of the fisheries protection of Moscow and the Moscow region, stated that, on the basis of an initiated administrative case, he was conducting a control catch of samples and samples of fish for laboratory analysis, although by law such activities can only be carried out by representatives of the Federal State Institution Mosrybvod. However, the official was not brought to any responsibility then, and this did not even affect his career.
At the same time, the SKP noted that this is the second criminal case initiated against officials of Rosrybolovstvo recently, and promised to send a corresponding representation to the management of the department. “In April of this year, a criminal case was opened against the assistant head of Rosrybolovstvo, Igor Bakulin,” the SKP statement says. -- The amount of the bribe was $250 thousand. Bakulin extorted this money from representatives of commercial firms for his assistance in holding an auction for the distribution of quotas for industrial fishing of Pacific salmon in the exclusive economic zone of the Russian Federation. Upon receiving $90,000 on April 21 through an intermediary, the official was detained. If the leadership of the federal agency does not take serious measures to prevent such cases, then the commission of such serious crimes may become systemic.”
Rosrybolovstvo itself, after the detention of its employees, promised to further tighten the fight against corruption. “Corruption will be burned out with a hot iron, we have fought and will continue to fight to restore order, we will provide all possible assistance to the security forces in identifying those who do not want to honestly fulfill their duties,” said Alexander Savelyev, head of the Rosrybolovstvo central public service center, on Friday. -- Alarming signals regarding Roman Postnikov and his deputy Boris Simonov were received throughout the year, and we promptly informed the FSB about this. As a result, the activities of dishonest officials ended in a Hollywood ending.”