Where is the money, Zin?

Today the Basmanny Court was to consider my statement of claim to the Investigative Committee.
Back in June last year, when the first wave of searches in the Bolotnaya case swept through Moscow, investigators and armed riot police broke down the door to my apartment and took away all the valuables. They also confiscated the money found in the apartment - about 450 thousand rubles (my savings for several years).

It cannot be said that the discovered cash caused a great stir among the investigators. That's a penny by their standards. I was summoned for interrogation, I answered the security officials' questions. And already in early October, the request for a refund was granted.

However, within four months the selected money was not transferred to my account. Each time, the investigators asked to call back “tomorrow or the day after tomorrow”, until finally on February 7 they canceled their own decision to return the money. A version was thrown into the press that they were checking whether Givi Targamadze had given me this money to organize a coup d'état. Willy-nilly, the idea arose that the money in the UK was trivially stolen, and now they are coming up with ridiculous excuses so as not to return it.

Since this whole story had acquired the character of a farce, there was no other way out but to go to court.

And today, at the appointed time, my lawyer Vadim Prokhorov and I went into the meeting room. Judge Mushnikova, who last week sent another person involved in the Bolotnaya case to jail, took the presiding chair. One problem: the investigator and the prosecutor did not appear for consideration. Accordingly, the judge did not have the materials of the case, which made it impossible to start consideration of my statement of claim. The meeting was rescheduled for March 4.

I didn't have time to leave the court building - a call to my mobile phone.

“Hello, Ilya Valerievich! Investigator for especially important cases Nikitin worries, - the caller introduced himself in a cheerful voice. - I have to interrogate you in the criminal case of Leonid Razvozzhaev. I’m waiting at the Investigative Committee on March 5.”

“Listen,” I say. Why didn't you come to court?

“Well, I shouldn’t have,” the investigator hesitated. “Sometime, probably.”

Of course, they don't have time.

Endless searches, interrogations, arrests of people and fabrication of political cases takes a lot of time! They do not have time to answer for their actions in court.