The extortion case was removed away from Moscow

To the level of store theft

In the Voronezh region, the consideration of the extortion of the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (UMMC) will soon begin. The accused is the former activist of the Stop Nickel movement Mikhail Bezmensky and the former chieftain of the Cossack autonomy of the city of Novokhopersk Igor Zhitenev, both are in custody. Previously, they participated in the struggle of environmental activists against Nickel’s extraction in the Khoper River basin. The human rights project “Ecosnik” , who monitored cases of persecution of nature defenders, appropriated Zhitenev’s status “Ecoster”, that is, a person who fell into conclusion “only because of consistent actions ... to protect the nature of the native land”.

In April 2015, after the refusal of the Prosecutor General’s Office to approve the indictment, the case in Moscow was transferred to Voronezh, where the regional prosecutor approved the document on April 30. According to information coming from the relatives of the detainees, the prosecutor's office of the Voronezh region signed the charge contrary to the position of the Prosecutor General’s Office. The deputy prosecutor general, Viktor Grin, in the case of the case indicated that the accused received money from the UMMC in accordance with the tasks that the company top managers put them. “It is obvious that the prosecutor’s office and the court are more accommodating and more shy,” said the environmental activist Konstantin Rubakhin, who actively opposed the activities of the UMMC.

At the end of April 2015, the accused were transported from Moscow to Voronezh. Now a decision is made on the place of the court. According to the relatives of the arrested, “Voronezh courts do not want to work on this case”, and he was transferred to the district court of the city of New Usman, 70 kilometers from Voronezh. This place is in no way connected with either the registration of the accused, or the circumstances of the case itself. According to Rubakhin, in this court, "in addition to the theft of sausage from the store, they never discussed anything."

Who controls the protest?

The investigation insists that activists demanded money from representatives of the UMMC in exchange for a promise to stop protest actions. The decision on the initiation of a criminal case states that the movements “in defense of the Hopra” and “Stop Nickel” are controlled by Bezmensky and Zhitenev. The accused allegedly committed unlawful actions, “which were expressed in the use of the violence (beating) of contracting organizations <...>, the intentionally destroyed their property <...>, as well as the distribution of information in the media that discredit MSMK LLC (Mednogorsk Copper-Sereal Combine-“ Daughter ”of the UMMC, plans to engage in the prey and processing of Voronezhsky Nickel-OTD-info). "

The clashes between the defenders of the hopes and the deposits of deposits were indeed. In February 2013, a brawl between the Cossacks and the heads of the Voronezhgeology enterprise, which was engaged in geological exploration, took place at the field of the field. And in May 2013, Igor Zhitenev was brutally beaten by the guards of the Elansky field.

The peak of a protest in a whim reached in June 2013. The property of the UMMC went: the massive gathering of opponents of Nickel production ended with arson of drilling rigs. Criminal cases were instituted. Roman Khvostov, Dmitry Chernyaev and Arthur Petrosyan received conditional terms on charges of applying violence against government representatives (year, and a half and two years, respectively). Activist Mikhail Boyarishchev was accused and sentenced to two and a half years of the colony settlement, although photographs and videos indicate his lack of involvement.

According to the case file, Mikhail Bezmensky demanded from representatives of the management of the UMMC of money and “promoting it to the appointment of the head of the administration of the Povorinsky district of the Voronezh region” - otherwise, they say, the shares will be continued. The adviser to the CEO of the company Peter Yamov transferred more than a million rubles to Bezmensky and paid for more than eight millions for his car, the investigation claims.

The case was opened by the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on November 22, 2013. Activists indicate the presence of ties in Moscow - therefore, the matter was instituted by the metropolitan police. In the documents of the Main Directorate of Economic Security and Countering of Corruption (GUEBIPK) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which conducted operational-search measures, other Voronezh environmental activists were also mentioned: Konstantin Rubakhin, Tatyana Karina, Marina Kokorina, wife of Bezmensky Galina Chibiryakova (her surname was written with an error-“Chibrikova” and “their unspecified) accomplices. " Moreover, in a report compiled back in August 2013, it is said that Bezmensky, Kargin, Kokorin and Chibrikova are the “most active participants” of the “organized group, consisting of radical-adjusted activists of opposition movements”, and Rubakhin is their leader (Zhitenev is not mentioned in these documents). All these people are called the organizers of the June riots.

It is important to note that already in the summer of 2013, Bezmensky and Chibiryakov left the organization “Stop Nickel” (they were not related to the “Hopra” movement), and later they completely stopped engaged in protest activities. Zhitenev only remained a member of the Public Council of the “Hoperation” movement, and was removed from the leadership of Cossack autonomy.

Bezmensky in a letter claims that the protests were “provoked by the employees of the UMMC. The fact is that the fight against the population was a very profitable business, because this allocated a good budget (bribery of activists, the construction of barriers, bribes to officials, etc.) ”. Rubakhin agrees with this: “Partly, of course, they could provoke something, because, as I understand it, they saw some kind of budget that was issued for peace. For protection must be reported, but not for bribery. ”

Negotiations with representatives of the leadership of the UMMC, judging by the materials of the case and the stories of Bezmensky himself, were really conducted. In deciphering the conversations of Bezmensky with the chairman of the company's board, Oleg Melukhov, we are talking about money, and about the car, and the place of the head of the administration of the Povorinsky district. However, it is obvious that not Bezmensky sets the conditions, but, on the contrary, Melukhov thus persuades the activist to influence the protesters, "so that there are no mass riots." From the materials of the case it is clear that Bezmensky also had to transfer money to Zhitenev so that he “resolved a question” with the Cossacks. Judging by the decoding, the representatives of the UMMC Rubakhin, who, according to Mlyukhov, “went out on all these white -footed movements,” as a result of which the Hopra’s defenders, like “Down with Putin,” were worried about the decoding. Bezmensky promised to deal with him. According to Rubakhin, Bezmensky was not against such cooperation with the UMMC.

Zhitenev at the interrogation said that the deputy leader of the company Yuri Nemchinov shouted at him, scolded the Cossacks who did not allow work at the deposits, and offered money "for resolving the conflict." (Bezmensky claimed that Nemchinov was soldering Zhitenev during this conversation.) Zhitenev, according to the deciphering of a conversation with Nemchinov, said that only “his own” could remove it. During the conversation, he demonstrated a clear reluctance to take money and said that if he took it, he would give it to the Cossacks. About other protesters, including Rubikhin, he spoke extremely negatively.

At the same time, the testimony of Peter Yamov indicates that the “Requirements of the transfer <...> funds” is not only “Bezmensky M.S., Zhitenev I.A.”, but also “K. Rubakhin, Chibiryakova G.V. and their accomplices "" For the termination of unlawful actions in relation to UMMC-Holding LLC, and currently continues. " Yamov also declares threats, without indicating from whom exactly they come.

How they beat and caught

November 26, 2013 Bezmensky was detained. Later, his letter was published , in which he described how the detention took place. According to Bezmensky, that day he met with Nemchinov, who handed him 15 million rubles, explaining that he could take seven more, should give to Zhitenev and another million - an activist from Novokhopersk Nelly Rudchenko (this was not discussed during the negotiations). After that, as Bezmensky says, a bunch of operatives “attacked him”, he was greatly beaten, threatened that they would put his wife.

Then Bezmensky, according to him, was taken to Borisoglebsk by car, where he handed over to Zhitenev for some reason not seven, but all 15 million, after which Zhitenev was also arrested. They also detained the wife of Bezmensky Galina Chibiryakov. All three were taken to Moscow. Here Bezmensky, he said, beat again, threats sounded again. Zhitenev also beat, writes Bezmensky.

The next goal of the Guinbipk of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was Konstantin Rubakhin - Bezmensky says that the administration officer who spoke with him ordered him to call Rubakhin and offer money. As Bezmensky later found out, it was the deputy chief of the Gueris Boris Kolesnikov, who was arrested in February 2014 on charges of exceeding official powers, and in June of the same year, according to the official version, he committed suicide, leaving the window of the Investigative Committee during the interrogation.

Bezmensky called Rubakhin and offered to meet. Rubakhin in response made him a meeting in the cafe "Workshop". “I got there in the“ Workshop ”, he worked-something he does not go,” said Rubakhin OVD-Info. - I called him, he says: I can’t go out, it’s better you come to me. I answer: then I went. I'm going to leave. At this time, they call me from Hopra and they say: yesterday they arrested Bezmensky in the afternoon. I'm going even faster. At this time, Misha calls, says: I’ll drive up now, everything is fine. By this time I had already left the cafe. Then the concierge calls from the house, says that I have an ambush. And I left. " Bezmensky writes that Rubakhina could not be detained, “t. K. operatives gathered very slowly. "

They never found Rubakhina. “I got in Moscow for a couple of weeks. It was evident that they were watching me: as soon as I left the apartments, the opera grew up there, ”he says. About the search in one of the apartments where Rubakhin lived, the OVD-info had to write : the housewives of the apartment was not in Moscow, her father was called from a lecture so that he would come and open the door, threatening that otherwise they would break the apartment. Currently, Rubakhin is outside of Russia. He claims that his negotiations by telephone and Skype are listening, all the movements of his friends in Russia and abroad "under control until now."

“ If I were on interrogation, I would immediately find myself in prison,” Rubakhin is sure.

Nevertheless, in the case, he appears only as a witness. In relation to Tatyana Kargina and Marina Kokorina, no action was taken. According to Rubakhin, the persecution of Kargina, maintaining relations with international environmental organizations, would cause a large scandal. Chibiryakova was in Moscow in an apartment rented by the operatives, and Bezmensky, according to him, continued to blackmail the fact that his wife would suffer. Chibiryakova herself suffered two strokes. Currently, its whereabouts are unknown.

From Bbean, in particular, they demanded that he abandoned the lawyers who hired his relatives. The lawyer Ruslan Chanidze, who was nevertheless invited by relatives, was not allowed to be sent to the pre-trial detention center for a long time. But the lawyer, according to the appointment, which was present at the first interrogations, called on Bezmensky not to argue with the operatives and agree to detention.

Bezmensky says that he was forced to read on the recorder and on the video “Some prepared“ confessions ”” and sign the prepared testimonies for himself and Zhitenev (in order to then try to challenge them in court, he did not put his signature). The protocol of the interrogation of Bezmensky, in particular, claims that Rubakhin told how he “paid” ecologists in Europe so that they write “false” scientific works about the dangers of the development of nickel-medal ores in the Novokhopersky district. It also says that Bezamensky and Chibiryakova, having secured the support of other activists, decided to “start a political career and go to power” and paid advances from 50 to 120 thousand rubles for “provocative articles about the company”. Bezmensky allegedly threatened the company's employees that they “continue to organize mass riots related to the destruction of the property of the UMMC, as well as actions to discredit its activities through the media”, if their conditions are not met. In the video shown on NTV, Bezmensky said that the idea of ​​getting money from the UMMC belonged to Rubakhin: he entrusted this case to Zhitenev, and Bezmensky himself was supposedly only a performer

At the end of March 2014, Bezmensky was taken for interrogation to the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where the adviser to the general director of the UGMMK Peter Yamov spoke to him, sitting in one of the offices in one of the offices (“The convoy later told me that they had never seen such a thing,” Besmensky writes). According to Bezmensky, Yamov demanded that he sign a pre-trial agreement with the investigation that will be used to “close someone”. “Some employees of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Voronezh do not do what they say, so we will plant them,” Yamov quotes the Bezmen 'words. “For this, you, Michael, will receive a very short time, an apartment, work in the company and good money.”

"The blow worked"

Later, however, the attitude of the investigators changed: they began to offer Mikhail to agree to a less serious accusation of fraud in order to get a suspended sentence. Bezmensky associates this with the process in the case of Boris Kolesnikov and his chief Denis Svugrobov: they were accused of fabrication of criminal cases and provocations: according to Bezmensky, the video recordings from the materials of his criminal case also testified to such methods of work of the guabip. In addition, Yamov in a conversation with Bezmensky admitted that he was friends with Sugrobov.

“If Sugrobov and Kolesnikov had not been fired, and then arrested, it was unlikely that I lived until today, and it would be impossible to prove something, because the media was very powerfully PR GUEBIPK, as they caught the scum of Bezmenky and Zhitenev, terrible extortionists from such a defenseless company as UGMMK-Holding,” writes Bezmensky. He clarifies that he decided to write this letter only after the arrest of Svugrobov and Kolesnikov, because he believes that now nothing threatens him and his relatives. He refused the confession. At the same time, after Chanidze’s lawyer sent a statement to the FSB and the Investigative Committee with a request to verify the facts from the letter of his client, Bezmensky was transferred to the pre -trial detention center with the worst conditions of the detention.

The prosecution was re -qualified from extortion to fraud, but the prosecutor's office refused to approve this version of the prosecution. Currently, Bezmenovsky and Zhitenev are accused of extortion on an especially large scale. Lawyer Zhitenev Alexei Vetrintsev stated in a conversation with the ATS-Info: “If we proceed from the materials that are in the case, the approval of the indictment does not correspond to the goals of our justice. We do not see any corpus delicti. ”

In March 2015, investigator Oleg Silchenko (included in the "List of Magnitsky") mentioned the surname of Rubakhin, speaking of the presence of established accomplices in the case. However, there are so far two accused. “Of course, they wanted to take me,” says Rubakhin. “But the fact that I left is also good for them, because the noise is smaller.” The activist admits that those who are behind this business managed to compromise and actually stop the protest: “They stopped him with less repression. If there were more people, there would be a scandal. And so people quarreled - they help to quarrel, tell through their agents, as I understand it, that activists took money from the company, knew what they were going to. The blow worked hard in all directions. ”