He stole a bribe, handed over Olga Mirimskaya, received 3 years
The Presnensky Court of Moscow sentenced a Moscow restaurateur to three years in prison in a general regime colony Ivan Kibalchich for stealing 550 thousand dollars from the head of the BKF bank, the founder of the Russian Product company Olga Mirimskaya. This is reported by the correspondent of Business FM. The convict and his lawyer Vladimir Linnik did not answer the radio station’s question whether they were satisfied with the court’s verdict.
Olga MirimskayaKibalchich was found guilty of fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – up to 10 years in prison). The case was considered in a special order, as the defendant pleaded guilty. Therefore, the court did not examine the collected evidence and did not interrogate witnesses, and the process took place in a simplified form. At the same time, the defendant could not be assigned a term exceeding two-thirds of the maximum possible. The trial began on January 21 and was completed in four sessions. February 22 court closed the process at the request of the defendant, who stated that he was afraid of psychological and physical pressure on his family, including from Olga Mirimskaya.
The latter has been in custody since December 17, 2021 on charges of giving a bribe in cars worth 3.2 million rubles to investigator Yuri Nosov near Moscow, who was in charge of the case of the kidnapping of her newborn daughter. Later, she was added three episodes of attempted bribery in the amount of 1 million 750 thousand dollars to the leadership of the Presnensky Court of Moscow and the 9th Arbitration Court of Appeal for property disputes with her ex-husband, ex-top manager of Yukos Alexey Golubovich. The case of Kibalchich was separated from the case of Mirimskaya and Nosov after he concluded a pre-trial cooperation agreement with the prosecutor’s office.
It is on his testimony, as well as on the testimony of his wife Ekaterina Kibalchich (formerly Seryakova), who was the head of the legal department of the Russian Product, that two episodes of the banker’s accusation are built. The first concerns an attempt to bribe the judges of the Presnensky Court in the amount of $550,000 and $700,000 to the judges of the Ninth Court of Appeal.
The owner of the capital’s restaurant “Secret Place” Ivan Kibalchich arrested in July 2022, although the banker applied for it back in 2017. In it, she claimed that Seryakova, the former head of the legal department of Russian Product OJSC, introduced Kibalchich to her as her lawyer fiancé and promised that he, for a fee of 550 thousand dollars, would help to achieve a decision in her favor on the division of jointly acquired property with her former husband, ex-top manager of Yukos Alexei Golubovich. However, the case was lost (each of the parties claimed the mansion on Nikolina Gora from the land, but the court divided the property in equal shares), and Kibalchich and Seryakova came up with a story that the funds went to bribe judges of the district court (Kibalchich himself claims that initially took money for this purpose. Ekaterina Seryakova (Kibalchich) previously declined to answer questions from Business FM.
Mirimskaya denies guilt. She claims that she is being slandered, and her former partner, co-owner of the Golden Crown payment system located in the United States, is behind her criminal case. Nikolai Smirnov, as well as her ex-husband, ex-top manager of Yukos Alexei Golubovich. Her latest statements are not commented on.
Mirimskaya noted that she had known Seryakova for ten years and completely trusted her, since she had been her son’s girlfriend for three years and practically lived at her house. Mirimskaya said that she had transferred the money to Kibalchich in cash, hoping to formalize an official contract with him in the future. Kibalchich himself admitted at a confrontation: he has no legal education, and in 2015 he was the owner of the Secret Place restaurant. Kibalchich said that he received 550 thousand dollars from Mirimskaya, but later returned the entire amount to her. The banker herself denied this fact, explaining that, firstly, she never leaves the building without a security guard, and secondly, she always leaves the parking lot, and therefore it was unrealistic to catch her at the entrance.
“It is interesting that in the case there is a recording of Mirimskaya’s conversation with Kibalchich, during which she demanded the return of the money, and Kibalchich said that they had already been spent, and offered to pay another half a million dollars to cancel the decision on appeal,” Olga Mirimskaya’s lawyer commented on the case to Business FM. Alexander Chernov. “It was made by Mirimskaya to confirm the fact of fraud in April 2015, while Kibalchich himself claimed that he returned the money to Mirimskaya either in February or March 2015.”
On March 13, the Basmanny Court of Moscow limited Olga Mirimskaya and Yuri Nosov in terms of familiarization with the materials of the case, which consists of 115 volumes, until March 31. Earlier, the court ordered the accused to familiarize themselves with the case by February 17, but this decision canceled the Moscow City Court.
