As it became known to Kommersant, Mikhail Bolotin, the founder and ex-head of the Tractor Plants Concern (KTZ), recently convicted of especially large embezzlement, was released. Taking into account the “course of active cooperation with the investigation” taken by him and the pre-trial agreement on cooperation with the prosecutor’s office, the machine builder received only two years in prison, of which he actually served less than a year and a half. Meanwhile, two of his alleged accomplices who did not admit guilt are still preparing for the trial, which will examine the merits of the criminal case of embezzlement of 90 million rubles. Mr. Bolotin will appear at this trial as a witness for the prosecution.
As Mr. Bolotin’s lawyer Alexander Asnis explained to Kommersant, his client had completely served the sentence imposed by the court in the form of two years in a penal colony, and paid a fine of 200 thousand rubles. and was released on February 22. At the same time, most of the measured period – 14 months – the convict spent in the Moscow Lefortovo pre-trial detention center, while still in the status of a prisoner. This time was credited to him in one and a half times, therefore, after the verdict of the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow, issued in November 2022, the convict had, in fact, to spend only 3.5 months in prison, which he spent in Lefortovo, without having left for the colony .
It is worth noting that, despite the symbolic punishment for a person guilty of a serious crime (the sanction under part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provides for up to ten years in a strict regime colony), Mr. Bolotin considered the sentence too severe and planned to appeal against it, seeking a suspended sentence. Later, however, he renounced his claims and gave the command to the lawyers to withdraw the already filed complaint. According to Kommersant’s sources close to the investigation, the convict’s position changed after representatives of the state prosecution made it clear that they also did not agree with the verdict and were considering the option of filing an appeal with the Moscow City Court to review the decision. True, already in the direction of tougher punishment.
Recall that the 61-year-old businessman, founder, former co-owner and general director of one of the largest machine-building holdings in Russia, KTZ, was detained by FSB operatives on September 29, 2021. Together with the honorary machine builder of the Russian Federation, Bolotin, his former employees were brought under escort to Moscow: Mikhail Shkolnik, deputy head of the KTZ for economics and corporate finance, and Irina Vostorgina, ex-head of the treasury of the holding. The investigative department of the FSB of the Russian Federation accused all three former managers of committing a particularly large group embezzlement and had them arrested in the Lefortovsky District Court of Moscow.
The claims of the investigation related to the period of 2014-2015, when all the accused were still in their positions in the KTZ. Then, as the FSB established, the Ministry of Defense allocated 5.2 billion rubles to the machine-building holding. for the design and production of prototypes of armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles under the Kurganets brand. According to the plan announced by the management of KTZ, the contract was to be fulfilled by two enterprises belonging to the concern: the machine-building plant in Kurgan (KMZ) – to manufacture light armored vehicles, and the Moscow Research Institute of Steel – to equip it with armor and dynamic protection. The institute, according to investigators, received 146 million rubles, but most of them – about 90 million rubles – were spent on issuing a loan to a certain LLC “New Investments” far from mechanical engineering. After several more dubious transactions, this money ended up in the account of a firm affiliated with the three defendants, and then was “cashed out, embezzled and used by them at their own discretion.”
The “Kurgans” thus lost their armor, which, however, they did not need, since the company, mired in debt, was unable to establish the production of combat vehicles. By decision of the government, 13 factories and institutes of the holding specializing in the defense industry came under the control of Rostec, and only five enterprises engaged in the manufacture of agricultural, road and railway equipment remained in the concern.
Simultaneously with the reorganization, personnel purges were carried out. Then all the leaders of the concern lost their posts, including its founder Mikhail Bolotin, who headed KTZ for more than ten years. The new managers began their work with audits of the activities of their predecessors, and as a result of them, several criminal cases were initiated, including the case of embezzlement of state funds allocated for the design of the Kurgans.
Interestingly, even at the stage of the preliminary investigation, the main defendant Bolotin fully admitted his guilt. Thanks to a pre-trial agreement on cooperation with the Prosecutor General’s Office, his criminal case was separated from the general one and considered in a special judicial procedure – without examining evidence. The whole trial took place in one two-hour session. On it, the state prosecution requested four years in prison and 400 thousand rubles for the repentant manager. fine, and the court reduced these figures by half.
As a result, in the 17 months that have passed since the initiation of a criminal case on embezzlement and the detention of the alleged plunderers, the main accused managed not only to receive, but also to serve his term. Interestingly, the now free man and law-abiding citizen Mikhail Bolotin still continues to be listed in the “basic” criminal case of his alleged accomplices Mikhail Shkolnik and Irina Vostorgina. True, only in the status of a witness for the prosecution – he will testify against his former subordinates in the upcoming trial on the merits of the case.
When this process will take place is not yet clear. According to Kommersant’s sources, back in December last year, the accused Shkolnik and Vostorgina completed their familiarization with the case materials, and the Prosecutor General’s Office transferred them to the same Meshchansky Court for final proceedings. Jurisdiction, as the participants in the upcoming trial believed, was determined by supervision on the principle of “the end of the alleged crime” – there was a bank on the territory of the Meshchansky district of Moscow through which the defendants could make dubious transactions with the money of the Ministry of Defense. Meanwhile, the district court refused to consider the criminal case of Messrs. Shkolnik and Vostorgina, handing it over to colleagues from the Khamovniki district of Moscow. Representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office and the defendants themselves did not agree with this decision. Both sides of the upcoming process started a dispute over territorial jurisdiction in the Moscow City Court, which has not yet made its decision.
Kommersant failed to contact the lawyers of the two remaining defendants in the criminal case. The press service of today’s KTZ “Kommersant” once again reminded that after the dismissal in 2017, none of the defendants had anything to do with the concern.