18.02.2011, 16:58:34

We came from the flanks

The Investigative Committee besieged the Moscow Region prosecutor's office from all sides

Under the influence of cobalt, the Bolsheviks often killed each other, while experiencing an incredible sense of pity and compassion.
Quote from the movie "Two Captains 2"

The investigation into the case of illegal gaming parlors casts an increasingly ominous shadow over the Moscow region prosecutor's office. The higher management had to sacrifice the queen - remove the first deputy prosecutor Ignatenko from affairs. But it did not help. Investigators found a weak point in the prosecutor's defense - dachas near Moscow.

After the first blow delivered by the joint forces of the Investigative Committee and the FSB last weekend, it seemed that the prosecutor's office had managed to stabilize the situation. With the strong support of Deputy Prosecutor General for the Central Federal District Vladimir Malinovsky, investigators had to close the case against the alleged organizer of underground casinos Ivan Nazarov several times and release him from custody.

True, Nazarov was allowed to walk only a few steps and was immediately detained on a new case. Fortunately, investigators have wide room for maneuver: as previously reported, gaming parlors were identified in 15 cities in the Moscow region, and a separate case can be opened for each such case.

After a misfire in the court of Sergiev Posad, investigators moved the fighting to Pushkino, where they were lucky. The arguments in the city court lasted almost the whole day. The prosecutor, teaming up with the lawyers of Nazarov and his accomplices, demanded that the request for arrest be rejected. He claimed that the investigators acted using illegal methods. In particular, according to the prosecutor, the businessman had a license to conduct lotteries. The investigators who opened a case against Nazarov under the article “fraud” claim that the salons to which the entrepreneur was related had illegal slot machines.

The lawyers tried to draw the judge's attention to the weakness of the investigation's arguments. In their opinion, all suspicions against their clients are based on the testimony of the administrator of the lottery club from Pushkino, Igor Volkov. He was detained along with the rest of the defendants in the case and soon wrote a confession.

However, as Kommersant writes , the investigator presented the judge with irrefutable arguments about the need for arrest. Thus, it turned out that Nazarov was detained on February 11 at Sheremetyevo airport in the company of First Deputy Regional Prosecutor Alexander Ignatenko. The businessman and the prosecutor had just returned from abroad, and, according to investigators, this was not their first trip together.

Friendly relations in themselves are not a crime, but investigators have evidence that it was Nazarov who paid for foreign tours for high-ranking employees of the regional prosecutor's office and police, as well as their relatives, sometimes accompanying them on trips. Thanks to the generosity of the businessman, law enforcement officers had the opportunity to see Paris, Prague, Vienna, Milan, Barcelona and other equally interesting places.

took part in the tours paid for by Nazarov As follows from the documents found by investigators, in addition to Ignatenko, regional prosecutor Alexander Mokhov and Odintsovo prosecutor Roman Nischemenko . However, Mokhov immediately rejected accusations of dishonesty and stated that he paid for all his foreign missions himself and could document this.

It is not yet known who else Nazarov sent to distant lands, but the fact that he was on friendly terms with the entire prosecutorial community near Moscow is beyond doubt. During the search, photographs were found from the entrepreneur's birthday, in which he was depicted in an informal setting, surrounded not only by Ignatenko and Nischemenko, but also by the head of the 15th department of the regional prosecutor's office Dmitry Urumov, the head of the regional environmental prosecutor's office Pavel Seidokin, Serpukhov prosecutor Oleg Bazylyan and the prosecutor of Noginsk Vladimir Glebov.

The investigator's arguments about Nazarov's connections with the powers that be seemed convincing to the judge, and she gave permission for his arrest for a period of two months. Five of his accomplices went to jail with him, including three police officers with ranks ranging from captain to lieutenant colonel. These employees of the regional department for combating economic crimes, according to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, were directly involved in the patronage of illegal gaming salons in Pushkino.

Everything according to the plot

The case of patronage of the gambling business in the Moscow region

Investigators managed to arrest Nazarov and his alleged accomplices only on the third attempt, and according to some reports, it was almost the fifth in six days. Both the Investigative Committee and the FSB, whose officers provide operational support in the case, complained about explicit and implicit opposition from the prosecutor’s office. The Prosecutor General's Office, in turn, reproached the Investigative Committee for violating criminal procedural legislation when initiating a new case on Pushkin's salons.

However, Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika ordered the initiation of an internal investigation into the employees mentioned in the gaming parlor case. Ignatenko was suspended from his duties during the inspection and took sick leave.

In addition, information appeared that the regional prosecutor and his first deputy applied for state protection, claiming that they were threatened with death by a certain head of one of the Moscow region districts. Mokhov denied rumors that he needed protection. However, the official who allegedly threatened them showed up himself. It turned out to be the head of the Serpukhov district, Alexander Shestun, who had already distinguished himself in the field of fighting corruption - according to his application, a high-ranking employee of the Prosecutor General's Office, Sergei Abrosimov, was jailed for eight years .

Shestun told the Russian edition of Forbes magazine that it was he who gave the FSB a tip on Nazarov, who, according to the official, is a confidant of the leadership of the regional prosecutor's office. Through him, Shestun claims, extortion occurs from entrepreneurs and officials who are threatened with criminal cases. The head of the district noted that he also almost became a victim of blackmail when they demanded two million dollars and a position as director of a municipal enterprise from him for getting rid of prosecutorial checks. The mediator, according to Shestun, was Nazarov.

The head of the district suggested, commenting on the latest confrontation between prosecutors and investigators, that the subordinate heads of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin may have received carte blanche from the leaders of the state. At the same time, Shestun did not rule out that demonstrative attacks on the Moscow region prosecutor’s office are only a propaganda move to imitate the fight against corruption.

Whatever the true reasons for the scandal that broke out, investigators hastened to consolidate the successes achieved and took a workaround. On February 17, a case of abuse of power was opened against the first deputy head of the Krasnogorsk region, Yuri Karaulov. He was suspected of transferring land for summer cottages in the Novorizhskoye Highway area at unreasonably low prices. According to the concluded agreements, the total annual rent for 200 acres is about six thousand rubles, despite the fact that the market value of one hundred square meters reaches a million rubles.

The chairman of the board of the non-profit dacha partnership Silans, which made such a successful deal, turned out to be the first criminal complaint, prosecutor Ignatenko. Among other summer residents, journalists managed to spot Krasnogorsk prosecutor Evgeny Puzanov, Istra prosecutor Mikhail Popkov and Pushkin prosecutor Ruslan Rezumenko. The deputy head of the Krasnogorsk OBEP Evgeniy Volchukov and several operatives of the regional Main Department of Internal Affairs also became the happy owners of hundreds of acres in Novorizhka.

But, as they say, the music did not play for long. One of the regional deputy prosecutors already closed the case against Karaulov on February 18, and handed over the materials handed over by the investigation to the police. According to the representative of the Investigative Committee , Vladimir Markin, as a result, investigators lost the testimony of a witness on which the version of the illegal lease of land for prosecutor's dachas was based.

At the time of writing this article, the prosecutor’s office still has the last word. The head of the Main Directorate of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation for supervision of the investigation, Andrei Nekrasov, spoke to journalists. He said that the Prosecutor General rejected the complaint of the Investigative Committee against the decision of Deputy Prosecutor General Malinovsky to close the first criminal case against Nazarov. According to Nekrasov, investigators incorrectly classified the underground gambling business as fraud, and it was necessary to initiate a case under the article “illegal entrepreneurship.”

In addition to explaining the legal subtleties, Nekrasov was outraged by journalists who openly accuse prosecutors of corruption and publish compromising documents and photographs. A representative of the Prosecutor General's Office called the premature conclusions of the media, based, by the way, on official reports of the FSB and the Investigative Committee, “a mockery of the Constitution.” He clarified that for such conclusions it is necessary to initiate criminal cases against prosecutors and bring charges against them. But neither one nor the other exists yet.

Andrey Kuznetsov

We came from the flanks

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