Ex-heading "Seventh Studio" testified to Kirill Serebrennikov

Today, August 9, the testimony of the former chief accountant of the Seventh Studio Nina Maslyaeva was read out in the Moscow City Court, according to which the artistic director of the Gogol Center Theater, director Kirill Serebrennikov, participated in the embezzlement of budget funds allocated for the Platform project.

“Itin, Serebrennikov, Malobrodsky developed a plan for the theft of funds allocated for the Platform project <...> Itin, Serebrennikov and Malobrodsky, with my help, made cashing out on the project. Subsequently, I, in agreement with them, included obviously false data in the financial statements, ” the Interfax Maslyaeva interrogation protocol quotes.

It also follows from her testimony that the “seventh studio” was engaged in “laundering of money” and there was a “black box” for illegal operations, TASS reports.

In addition, as Kommersant writes, Maslyaeva stated that the Seventh Studio was created to steal a subsidy of 200 million rubles.

On May 23, Serebrennikov, Director of Ramt Sofia Apfelbaum and Gogol Center, took searches in the case of the Seventh Studio. After the search of Serebrennikov and Apfelbaum, they interrogated the Investigative Committee.

On May 24, Maslyaeva and the former general director of the Seventh Studio Yuri Itin were detained. On June 21, the Presnensky court arrested the former general producer of the Seventh Studio Alexei Malobrodsky. Now he and Maslyaeva are contained in jail, Itin is under house arrest.

They are accused of embezzlement of budget funds allocated to the Seventh Studio. Today, at a meeting of the Moscow City Court, which examines the appeals of the protection of Maslyaeva, Malobrodsky, Itina, they were brought “expanded accusations” under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud on a particularly large amount that is part of a group of persons), the essence of which is still unknown.

According to the lawyer of Lesser Ksenia Karpinskaya, the investigation did not change the procedural status of Serebrennikov, who was taking place in the “Seventh Studio” case.

She stated that the defense is incomprehensible to new expanded charges against the defendants of the case, as well as the established amount of damage: “According to the materials announced today, the amount of damage to the case reached 68 million rubles, but at the end of July it amounted to 70 million rubles, and previously the accused was charged with about 2 million rubles of damage. At the same time, the website of the Investigative Committee contains information about 200 million rubles. We do not understand the accusations, ”said Karpinskaya, noting that her client still denies her guilt.

PS Lyubravsky’s lawyer Julia Lakhova told in the Moscow City Court that the leaders of Moscow theaters turned to President Vladimir Putin with a letter in which they asked him to intervene in the situation with the arrest of the former General Producer of the Seventh Studio, RBC reports. Among the signed by the letter, General Director of the Bolshoi Theater Vladimir Urin, artistic director of RAMT Aleksey Borodin, President of the Prize and Festival "Golden Mask" Igor Kostolevsky, director of the theater named after Vakhtangov Konstantin Krok, founder of the Satyrikon Theater Konstantin Raikin, general director of the theater of nations Maria Revyakina.