Kushchevka decides everything

On October 29, the Kushchevsky District Court of the Krasnodar Territory is due to make a decision in the case of Rostov journalist Alexander Tolmachev, accused of extortion (Article 163 of the Criminal Code). Tolmachev is not the only defendant in the case, but he is the main target of prosecution, accompanied by numerous violations.

For Tolmachev it all started on December 15, 2011. That evening, he, as well as two other current defendants, director of the Vit company Yuri Galagan and his deputy Elena Morozova, were detained in Novocherkassk - formally due to the fact that the police had information that all three were involved in extortion, and They specifically demanded a BMW car from the director of the Sofia company, Oleg Kozlov, in exchange for a promise not to publish articles compromising his son Denis Kozlov, an employee of the local department for combating economic crimes. At the same time, for some reason the arrest was carried out by employees of the department for combating extremism.

In fact, the start of the persecution of Tolmachev was given six months earlier, when the deputy head of the Rostov City Internal Affairs Directorate, Mikhail Korneev (as Tolmachev’s defender Alexandra Izucheeva recalled, he later became the head of the Tyumen City Internal Affairs Directorate and gained notoriety in this position ) applied to the regional court with permission to wiretap the journalist, stating that he is suspected of being a member of a nationalist organization and printing extremist literature in his own printing house. The court allowed to tap Tolmachev's phone. Subsequently, none of the facts reported by Korneev were confirmed. In the case, there was no longer talk of a nationalist organization or extremist literature, from which we can conclude that this pseudo-information was used as a far-fetched pretext.

Tolmachev was the only one of the three suspects who was taken into custody. He was the first to be officially charged.

The very first episode was based on Oleg Kozlov’s statement and operational search activities (carried out, as Izucheeva claims, illegally, with a decree issued retroactively). Tolmachev himself and his defense generally believe that the episode with Kozlov was based on a police provocation: Kozlov, who was arguing with Galagan about the companies’ debts, insisted that Tolmachev sign their settlement agreement, which was then presented as evidence in the extortion case.

Later, the case began to acquire new episodes. The accountant of Galagan's company, Lyudmila Degtyareva, suspected of stealing a large sum from the account, reported extortion when Galagan, Morozova and Tolmachev, who provided legal assistance to Galagan, began to demand the return of money from her. At the same time, a case of fraud was (not immediately) brought against Degtyareva herself.

Two more episodes appeared after the head of the Rostov region police, Anton Grachev, according to Izucheeva, went on television calling on everyone who suffered from Tolmachev’s actions to write a statement. Thus, the former banker Konstantin Senyaninov and the director of the construction company “Slavs” Yuri Pogiba recalled the extortion on the part of Tolmachev. The first cited as evidence an article published in the newspaper “Authorized to State,” the founder and editor-in-chief of which was Tolmachev: the article was written after Senyaninov’s ex-wife contacted the newspaper with a complaint that he was taking away the share of ownership of the apartment from their daughters; Senyaninov previously won a lawsuit against the newspaper for the protection of business reputation, honor and dignity in connection with the same article. (At the same time, the witnesses for the prosecution in the investigation of the episode of extortion from Senyaninov were his driver, who was suspected of beating Senyaninov’s ex-wife - the investigation into the beating was stopped - and his secretary, to whom Senyaninov transferred that very apartment.) He also died earlier. filed claims for protection of honor and dignity in connection with publications in publications edited by Tolmachev. Tolmachev's defense notes that he is accused of threatening Senyaninov and Pogiba, although neither mentioned this in their initial statements. Izucheeva claims that the information about the threats was later falsified by the Main Investigation Department of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of the Rostov Region. The defense asked the investigation to provide details of telephone conversations in order to make sure that the victims were really with the accused in the place indicated in the materials at the specified time, but investigator Svetlana Urazova requested only details of Tolmachev’s telephone conversations.

Both the investigation and the court, according to Izucheeva, committed a lot of violations. “Whatever piece of paper you take, there will be a violation of the Code of Criminal Procedure,” she says. At the trial, the defense filed 48 motions to declare various evidence presented by the prosecution inadmissible. Judge Victoria Ananich refused to satisfy all these requests. During the investigation, laptops belonging to Tolmachev's son-in-law and grandson were seized, all documents, including agreements between Tolmachev's newspapers and distributors, papers indicating company details, various drafts - all this was not related to extortion and ultimately was not used at trial, although all the seized items and documents were included as evidence. (Numerous violations and other circumstances of the case are described in detail on the website of the Alexander Tolmachev Information and Legal Center.) The judge repeatedly removed Tolmachev’s lawyers from the trial and appointed others without his consent. To participate in court hearings, Tolmachev was taken from pre-trial detention center No. 2 in Armavir to a temporary detention facility at the Kushchevsky district police station, where he was left for a longer period than the ten days required by law. In March 2014, Tolmachev was removed from the courtroom until the end of the debate. his last word - judge Ananich interrupted his speech. Tolmachev was unable to fully pronounce

Tolmachev and his supporters believe that the recently deceased chairman of the Rostov Regional Court, Viktor Tkachev, was behind this whole story. Investigator Maxim Lukanin, who opened the case, admitted this to his defenders (subsequently a criminal case was opened against him and he was fired), and investigator Urazova, according to Tolmachev, offered to write positive material about Tkachev in exchange for dropping the case. Tolmachev indeed repeatedly wrote revealing materials about the chairman of the regional court. Izucheev’s defense attorney notes that shortly before Tolmachev’s arrest in an extortion case, he was planning to go to Moscow for a rally against arbitrariness in the judicial system of the Rostov region, and after the rally it was planned to hand over a petition to remove Tkachev from office. About forty people were traveling by bus. They only managed to get to the city of Millerovo, about 200 kilometers from Rostov. accompanied them all the way Some kind of passenger car , and near Millerovo it carefully crashed into a bus. The police appeared immediately, took the driver away, and the bus with passengers remained standing and stood there for twelve hours. All this time, documents about the accident were supposedly being compiled. Only in the morning the prosecutor from Millerovo arrived and asked why, in fact, they were keeping people. The people were released, but, of course, they did not attend the Moscow rally. According to Izucheeva, since by this time Tolmachev’s phone had been tapped for almost five months, all interested people were aware of where and when he was going to go. The provocation with the car, in her opinion, was organized by the head of the Rostov police, Grachev, and his boss, the head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of the Rostov Region, Alexey Lapin, who “found a common language with the chairman of the regional court.”

Tolmachev has been subjected to various types of persecution before. So, in 1995 he was shot at, and in 1999 he was attacked with a metal rod and brass knuckles. All this, apparently , was caused by his revealing publications on corruption in the armed forces. The current criminal prosecution, according to Izucheeva, was carried out “not so much to bring to criminal responsibility, but to ensure that Tolmachev sat in a pre-trial detention center for as long as possible, so that he would not be able to resist and so that his newspaper would be closed, so that articles about judges, police officers, and prosecutors would not be published "

Despite his stay in a pre-trial detention center, Tolmachev participated in the elections: the RPR-PARNAS party nominated him as a candidate for mayor of Bataysk, and then for the Legislative Assembly of the Rostov Region. The party also sent a complaint to Putin, the Constitutional Court and Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika about the illegal prosecution of Tolmachev.

Meanwhile, representatives of the human rights community have a mixed reaction to the story with Tolmachev. According to the president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, Alexei Simonov, “when the matter just began, everyone was sure that the fight for Tolmachev was a sacred cause and everyone should immediately start fighting for him.” Simonov, knowing about the conflict between Tolmachev and Tkachev, ensured that the case of the Rostov journalist was considered in a court in another region. However, as Simonov says, “by a monstrous coincidence of circumstances, or perhaps by malicious intent, the case ended up in the Kushchevsky court. This is really not the Rostov region, but the Krasnodar region, but the very word “Kushchevka” when talking about justice evokes, to put it mildly, a rather unpleasant feeling. But it is impossible to say that what I asked for was not fulfilled.” Tolmachev himself is confident that Tkachev was involved in transferring the case to the Kushchevsky court. Simonov agrees that there is an order in Tolmachev’s case, and explains this by saying that the journalist “harassed representatives of local authorities” and prevented them from working, “like a fly buzzing over your ear interferes.” “But at the same time,” continues Simonov, “I do not subscribe to the idea that Tolmachev’s activities are certainly fair and reasonable. The point of the activities of people like Tolmachev is to provide legal assistance to people without being a professional lawyer, and to live off this assistance. For us, who hold a different point of view on ways to help people, this is not very clear. Most likely, this is the wrong position to begin with.”

Simonov sees no reason to bring criminal charges against Tolmachev, but at the same time believes that there may be justified claims against the journalist because he does not observe any rules of personal hygiene, including in relation to his clients. There are reasons to be prejudiced about what he did.” “I think that he is much less guilty than they are trying to impute to him,” continues Simonov. — Accusations of blackmail are often quite dubious in nature. On the other hand, over the past few years there have been a certain number of people who have a very unique attitude towards this.”

The human rights activist does not consider the case against Tolmachev political, since, in his opinion, “Tolmachev has long gone beyond the legal framework, and it is unclear what position he actually takes.”

The fate of many people involved in this case developed in a rather bizarre way. To date, the head of the Main Investigation Department of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of the Rostov Region, which was in charge of the case, has been fired. Investigator Urazova went to work somewhere in the district department. A criminal case was opened against investigator Lukanin and he was fired. Witness Denis Kozlov, son of the first victim Oleg Kozlov, was fired from the police. The victim Pogiba left for France, and the court was unable to contact him. The victim Senyaninov died. The alleged customer, Chairman of the Rostov Regional Court Tkachev, died. Nevertheless, the matter has been brought to the final point. During the debate, the prosecution asked Tolmachev to be sentenced to nine years in prison.