Translated material
The former general director of Kirovles speaks about the unprofitability of the agreement with VLK and pressure from the defendants
Former general director of KOGUP "Kirovles" Vyacheslav Opalev on Thursday testified at a court hearing in Kirov in a criminal case of embezzlement of the enterprise's property, one of the defendants in which is former adviser to the Kirov governor Alexei Navalny.
Answering the prosecutor's questions, V. Opalev stated that Peter Ofitserov was under pressure from Vyatka Forestry Company LLC (VLK), an Interfax-Povolzhye agency correspondent reports from the court.
“The pressure was... If you don’t sign (the agreement, the proposals), “those at the top” will quickly decide everything. Everything is agreed upon there, we will continue to work,” said V. Opalev, explaining that the concept “at the top” meant the regional government, although P. Officers did not name specific names.
“And then Navalny himself (defendant Alexei Navalny, former adviser to the head of the Kirov region - IF), at a meeting with Shcherchkov (Sergei Shcherchkov, deputy governor - IF) started a showdown that volumes through VLK were not going well,” said the former general director "Kirovles".
Speaking about VLK, he noted that the company was created on the initiative of Alexei Navalny, “because we had negotiations with him on the creation of this company.”
P. Ofitserov, who became its leader, was brought to V. Opalev in Kirovles by A. Navalny.
“I explained to him what we were doing. Then we went to the forestry enterprises and showed where our products were,” the general director of the enterprise showed the former, adding that they also visited other forestry enterprises in the region.
According to him, the agreement on the supply of products with VLK LLC was concluded in March 2009, developed by P. Ofitserov, electronically provided to the commercial department of Kirovles and then to V. Opalev himself.
V. Opalev called the concluded agreement “murky”, according to it “KOGUP will be responsible for everything.” V. Opalev’s subordinates agreed with his unprofitability. The general director of Kirovles proposed moving to more transparent conditions, but P. Officers said that further agreements would follow.
Speaking about the execution of the contract, V. Opalev noted: “Payment was made with long delays. If we worked directly with enterprises, we could take an advance payment, but in this case this was not the case.”
Currently, the prosecutor is voicing the testimony of V. Opalev from the materials of the criminal case.
According to the investigation, A. Navalny, being an adviser to the governor of the Kirov region, organized the theft of the property of the regional state unitary enterprise "Kirovles", entering into a conspiracy with the director of Vyatka Timber Company LLC, Pyotr Ofitserov, and the general director of the KOGUP "Kirovles" Vyacheslav Opalev.
The investigation believes that from May to September 2009, more than 10 thousand cubic meters of forest products belonging to the State Unitary Enterprise Kirovles were stolen, and damage to the budget of the Kirov region was caused in the amount of more than 16 million rubles.
The investigation of the case was conducted by the main investigative department of the Investigative Committee. A. Navalny is accused of organizing a large embezzlement of someone else's property (Article 33, Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), and P. Officers is accused of complicity (Article 33, Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).