The prosecutor's office appealed the city court's verdict in the case of an official of the State Department of Traffic Safety

The city prosecutor's office appealed to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation with a cassation appeal against the verdict of the St. Petersburg City Court in a criminal case of embezzlement of budget funds, in which the first deputy director of the State Institution "Directorate for Traffic Management in St. Petersburg" (DODD) Alexander Lashch was a defendant. The official, we recall, was sentenced to suspended imprisonment for fraud and money laundering. Now the city prosecutor's office is asking to cancel the sentence in full and return it for a new trial.

As follows from the verdict of the city court, the first deputy director of the Main Directorate of DODD, Alexander Lashch, and the general director of Brokk North-West LLC, Grigory Pushkin, together with the non-working Georgy Popov, falsified documents about the bank details of Tekhintro-Contact LLC. And then they transferred about 8.2 million budget rubles to the company’s new accounts in the VEFC bank for road marking work. From there the money was transferred to one of the Yekaterinburg branches of Sberbank and then cashed out.

In addition, the investigation believes that it was planned to steal another 26 million rubles in a similar way, but this crime was not completed. Investigative authorities qualified these acts as preparations for fraud.

Additionally, Alexander Lash was charged with receiving a bribe. According to investigators, the official allegedly received $53 thousand from the Techintro-Contact company for signing the acceptance certificate for the work performed.

During the trial, Georgy Popov entered into a pre-trial agreement with the investigation: in exchange for admitting guilt and testimony incriminating his accomplices, he received a suspended prison sentence by the verdict of the Kuibyshev court. Alexander Lashch was in isolation during the investigation and trial, and Grigory Pushkin was released on bail of 2 million rubles.

In the city court, Messrs. Lashch and Pushkin pleaded guilty only to the episode of theft of 8.18 million rubles. As a result, the city court found the official and his accomplice guilty of fraud and sentenced them to suspended imprisonment for 7 years 6 months and 6 years 6 months. For the rest of the charges, the defendants were acquitted for lack of corpus delicti and due to lack of involvement. After the verdict was announced, Alexander Lashch was released.

However, the city prosecutor's office, having studied the court's reasoning, filed a cassation submission to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, demanding that the verdict be overturned and the case sent for a new trial. One of the reasons, according to the supervisory agency, is the leniency of punishment. In addition, the city court, whose verdict the official’s lawyer called “justice of a good European level,” disagreed with the prosecutor’s office in assessing the evidence collected by the investigation. In the opinion of the supervisory authority, they are sufficient to render a guilty verdict on all counts.

Dmitry Marakulin

The road worker was given little