“No villains, no triumph of justice.” How a policewoman accused of falsifying detainee reports is being tried in Moscow

Police confession

The fact that the protocols were falsified became known at the appeal hearing in the case of activists Ekaterina Maksimova and Pavel Bukhshtab in the Moscow City Court. In 2020, they and four other opponents of the construction of the South-Eastern Expressway were fined one thousand rubles under the article on disobedience to the police (Article 19.3 of the Administrative Code).

Two policemen, whose signatures were on the protocols, were summoned to the Moscow City Court for questioning. “The employees did not recognize the activists and did not understand why they became witnesses in these cases, so the judge wanted to familiarize them with the materials. I asked the court for permission to ask the first question first. The question was simple: were the employees on duty that day. One of the employees said that he was not on duty that day,” says lawyer from OVD-Info Yulia Tregubova, who represents the interests of activists.

The police confirmed that they did not draw up these reports and did not detain these people. “They were probably not warned about what, why and why. They didn’t know why they came there [to the court hearing],” Tregubova suggests.

After this, the Moscow City Court overturned the decision of the court of first instance, and then issued a private ruling on the inadmissibility of violating the law addressed to the chief of police for the Southern Administrative District. The Internal Security Service of the Internal Affairs Directorate filed a petition to conduct a handwriting examination.

The Moskvorechye-Saburovo police department, whose employees admitted in court that they did not draw up reports, underwent an internal audit and several police officers were fired. However, criminal articles on abuse of power (Part 1 of Article 285 of the Criminal Code) and falsification of evidence in an administrative case (Part 1 of Article 303 of the Criminal Code) were charged only to police inspector Ekaterina Zlobina.

According to the prosecution, it was she who falsified the documents “in order to create a favorable impression of her professional qualities

before management" and "out of other personal interests expressed in artificially inflating their performance indicators."

Attempts to come to an agreement

In the fall of 2022, opponents of the construction of the South-Eastern Expressway Larisa Bodrova, Pavel Bukhshtab, Ekaterina Maksimova and another activist with whom OVD-Info was unable to contact, as well as municipal deputy of the Pechatniki district Sergei Vlasov and Moscow City Duma deputy Pavel Tarasov, Zlobina transferred two thousand rubles each . They received notification of this by mail. Probably, in this way the woman wanted to compensate for the damage - the amount was twice the fine imposed on him in 2020.

At the same time, the former police officer tried to contact each of the victims so that they would agree to consider the case in a special manner. She even met one of them, Pavel Bukhshtab, in person. “It is unknown why she needs a personal meeting. I just listened to her, but did not fulfill her request,” the activist said. This is how six environmental defenders learned that a criminal case had begun; no one notified the victims about the start of court hearings.