There was no murder in the Merlion case

The charge against the leaders of Merlion, one of Russia's largest electronics wholesalers, is based on the testimony of a combatant in eastern Ukraine and does not include murder, learned . Kommersant

Important update (as of 04/18/2022)

Already after the release of this text, the story of the assassination attempt on the former top manager of Merlion Vyacheslav Simonenko acquired an impressive amount of new details. All of them, in our opinion, are an important addition, without which the understanding of the essence of this conflict may turn out to be incorrect. Let's retell them in chronological order:

• First, in September 2021, was put Oleksiy Nesnov, an investigator for particularly important cases, who was in charge of the attempted murder case against Symonenko, on the wanted list. Nesnov himself is on trial for bribery. By this time, the criminal case against the two shareholders of Merlion, Alexei Abramova and Vladislav Mangutov, was terminated.

• Then, in February 2022, the Investigative Committee dropped the criminal case against all the co-owners of the Merlion, including Oleg Karchev, as well as the former head of the group's security, Boris Levin, "due to the absence of an event of the crimes he was accused of." Then the court decided to arrest Symonenko.

• By April 2022, new details of the case were revealed: according to Kommersant , the Investigative Committee concluded that Simonenko himself could have staged the attempt on his own life, who expected to receive $ 4.5 million from former employers as compensation for leaving the business, help him in this could and two fighters of the People's Militia Brigade of the DPR . All of them are accused of falsifying evidence, false denunciation and other crimes. Vyacheslav Simonenko is in jail.

According to the newspaper, an unnamed witness turned himself in to the FSB and testified that in 2015 he was approached by one of the defendants, former vice-president of Euroset Boris Levin. He allegedly offered to attack the house in the Krasnogorsk district of the Moscow region of one of the businessmen working in the same company for a reward. According to the witness, he executed the order together with his partner, throwing Molotov cocktails at the house. But the house did not burn down, and there were also no casualties or injuries. The second alleged participant in the attack died or died a few years later.

The detention of three co-owners of one of the largest wholesale companies in the electronics market Merlion Oleg Karchev, Vladislav Mangutov and Alexei Abramov became known in October. It was reported that they were accused of intentional destruction of property, resulting in the death of a person, and murder committed by a group of persons in a generally dangerous way by prior conspiracy.

This week, the terms of arrests that expired on November 6 were extended by another three months, until February 6, 2021. The defense told the publication that in the criminal case we are talking about attempted murder, not murder.

According to Kommersant's sources, if the criminal prosecution drags on, the company may not only have serious problems, but also change shareholders.

You can read more about the business and the company that owns the Positronics chain of stores and the Citylink online store here .