Criminal prosecution of the ex-director of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater Kekhman was discontinued

The Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs stopped the criminal prosecution of the former general director of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater, ex-generies of the JFC group of companies, Vladimir Kekhman. According to Kommersant, cases against former JFC top managers Andrei Afanasyev and Yulia Zakharova were also terminated.

On November 14, the senior investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Dmitry Grishin terminated the lack of a crime against the case against Kekhman, Zakharova and Grishin under part 4 of article 159.1 (fraud in the field of lending committed by an organized group on an especially large scale) and part 4 of Article 174.1 (washing of funds received by criminal means organized by a group or on a particularly large scale).

On the same day, Grishin opened a new case under Part 1 of Article 176 of the Criminal Code (illegal receipt of a loan; up to five years of colony) and charged Afanasyev and Zakharova as part of him. Two days later, Kekhman became the accused in the new case. According to the plot of the case, the JFC leadership to receive loans informed the banks false data on the financial and household position of the group of companies.

On November 21, the case according to the 176th article was also terminated after the statute of limitations, which is five years for medium gravity: according to the investigation, the last illegal loan JFC received in 2011.

After the termination of the cases, the arrest from the property of the JFC was removed: nine apartments on Moskovsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, oil depots in the village of Shushara, located there, as well as pilrams in Kazan.

The decision to stop the persecution of JFC managers is checked by the Prosecutor General. Earlier, representatives of victims of banks complained to the supervisory authority about the inaction of the investigators of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. As noted, if the Prosecutor General’s Office agrees with the closure of the case, the creditors can only require compensation for their losses in civil proceedings. At the same time, the JFC went bankrupt in 2015, and Kekhman himself was declared bankrupt in 2012 in the UK, and in 2016 in Russia.

The Sberbank said that the actions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs "raise a lot of questions." "Sberbank considers to be illegal and unreasonable to re -qualify the accusation of Kekhman from fraud in the field of lending to illegally obtain a loan and will appeal the decision to terminate the criminal case," the Bank’s press service emphasized.

Kekhman became a defendant in the case of fraud in 2015. JFC leaders were accused of embezzlement of 20.2 billion rubles , which a group of companies received in 2010-2011 as eight loans from Raiffeisenbank, Uralsib Bank, Sberbank of Russia, Moscow Bank, Promsvyazbank and a number of other credit institutions.

Kekhman himself refused to admit guilt.

On July 14, Kekhman left the post of general director of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater. According to the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, Kekhman resigned in connection with the lawsuit about his bankruptcy, "so as not to undermine the image" of the department.

On March 29, 2015, Vladimir Medinsky dismissed the previous general director of the theater Boris Mazhrich after the scandal with the production of the opera Tangaizer. Kekhman, appointed in his place, excluded her from the repertoire.

The opera was delivered in December 2014. The action in it is transferred today. In the version of the director of the director of Timofei Kulyabin, Jesus Christ became the hero of the erotic film, which is shot by the director Tangaizer. After the complaint of Metropolitan Tikhon, who stated that the production insults the feelings of believers, the prosecutor’s office aroused administrative affairs in relation to Kulyabin and Mazhrich under the article "Intentional public desecration of religious or litigation, religious veneration, signs or emblem of worldview symbolism and paraphernalia." At the same time, the metropolitan himself did not look at the performance, and gave the assessment of the production from the words of the audience.

On February 25, 2015, the Investigative Committee began a pre-investigation verification for the presence of an article 282 of the Criminal Code in the formulation of composition (excitement of hatred or enmity).

On March 10, 2015, the justice of the Central District of Novosibirsk, Ekaterina Sorokina, did not find an offense in administrative cases of staging the opera Tangaizer . Things were terminated.