Forbes found entrepreneurs whose companies were visited by the police after rallies in support of Navalny

After the January rallies, the police began to come to the entrepreneurs detained at them with checks - the security forces explain this with tax claims against their business. Businessmen and lawyers themselves told Forbes that the police “meticulously” began to look for violations in the work of companies only after the protests.

last week At least four company executives, who were detained by the security forces at rallies, told the Apology of Protest organization that after that employees of the Department of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption Control (GUEBiPK) of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs came to their companies with checks. The police called the tax authorities the initiators of the unscheduled inspection of companies. The businessmen did not give their names then.

Forbes spoke to several entrepreneurs who were visited by the police. As one of them, the head of the IT company Simple Technologies Pavel Yarilin, told the publication, he and his adult daughter were detained at a rally on January 31. After that, a few days later, employees of the GUEBiPK came to their apartments, who announced that an inspection had begun in Simple Technologies. Yarulin was asked to provide documents on the company's activities - bank statements, a report on account transactions, a book of expenses and income, constituent documents. According to Yarulin, the policeman meticulously interrogated him for more than three hours. “He wanted to show that he was collecting information on me. But I got the impression that everyone here already knows about me.”

A similar situation happened with the general director of the Bkf Service car wash in Sergiev Posad, Eduard Kurbanaliev. His police officer asked to come to the department by phone, saying that the prosecutor's office was interested in the businessman. After that, an employee of the city administration called the businessman with clarifications on the registration data of the company, and the Federal Tax Service asked to describe the activities of the organization and sent a tax audit report. The police officers also continued to call, asking if the businessman could take 250 thousand rubles from the cash desk and deposit 150 thousand rubles into the current account. “I got the feeling that they are trying to find at least some clue to reveal violations,” Kurbanaliev said.

According to Mikhail Biryukov, a lawyer with the Moscow Chamber of Advocates, there may be more entrepreneurs who have faced such problems after the rallies, they just do not want to make the situation public. “People are afraid of causing even more repression against their companies,” Biryukov explains.