Culture figures ask to free the ex-director of the Gogol Center from custody

More than 30 cultural figures, including director Alexander Sokurov, writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya and multiplier Yuri Norshtein, signed an open letter asking him to free him from the investigation of the ex-director of Gogol-Center, Alexei Malobrodsky, accused of fraud. The letter is published on the website of "Echo of Moscow".

“We consider this accusation to be absurd and do not see any legal grounds or practical meaning in the content of Alexei Malobrodsky in custody. He repeatedly talked about his readiness to cooperate with the investigation and give true testimonies, his colleagues, many cultural and art figures, were guided by him. He spent a month in the investigative isolator without a criminal case against him, which was simply illegal, which the prosecutor stated in court, ”the open letter says.

On June 27, the letter in support of Malobrodsky was written by members of the board of the Guild of Theater Managers.

Alexei Malobrodsky worked at the Gogol Center from the moment the theater was founded in February 2013 until March 2015. He came to the theater with Cyril Serebrennikov.

The investigation believes that Alexei Malobrodsky, who was the General Producer of the Seventh Studio, in 2012 entered into a criminal conspiracy with the former general director and ex-head of the organization Yuri Itin and Nina Maslyaeva with the aim of kidnapping part of the funds allocated studio for cultural projects, one of which was the performance “Sleep on a Summer Night”. The amount of damage for this episode is more than 2.3 million rubles.