The Basmanny Court of Moscow arrested for two months the Deputy Head of the Central Customs Administration, Major General of the Federal Customs Service Alexander Beglov and his subordinate, Colonel Alexander Aleev. They are accused of taking a bribe in the amount of 3.8 million rubles. from businessmen Artem Berezhny and Dmitry Krasnogorsky. The latter, unlike his comrade, will be under investigation not in a detention center, but in a mansion on Nikolina Gora.
The arrest by FSB operatives of a general and a colonel of the Federal Customs Service, as well as two businessmen, became known on the morning of March 24. And already at about three o’clock in the afternoon, the Basmanny Court began to consider the petitions of the Main Investigative Directorate of the ICR for their arrests. All four defendants were brought to the district court already in the rank of defendants – to the deputy head of the Central Customs Administration Alexander Beglov (he began his service in 2001 and was awarded numerous departmental medals, including “For Diligence”) and the head of the specialized customs post of the Central Excise Customs Alexander Aleev of the TFR charged with taking a bribe in the amount of 3.8 million rubles. (part 6 of article 290 of the Criminal Code). In turn, businessman Dmitry Krasnogorsky was accused of mediating the transfer of this bribe (part 4 of article 291.1), and businessman Artem Berezhnoy of giving illegal remuneration (part 4 of article 291 of the Criminal Code).
The court first considered the petition for the arrest of Mr. Krasnogorsky. An overweight businessman with difficulty, on crutches, climbed to the second floor of the court, where the hearing was being held. About five minutes after it began, at the insistence of Andrey Veniaminov, the investigator of the ICR for especially important cases, who is conducting the investigation, the meeting was declared closed, and the investigator motivated his demand by ensuring the safety of the participants in the process. The prosecutor supported this demand, and after the court satisfied it, the arrest petition was considered already without journalists. Approximately an hour later, the district court refused the investigator’s request and sent the obviously not very healthy defendant under house arrest. His entrepreneur will serve in his mansion in the SNT “Urban Planner”, located in the area of the elite Nikolina Gora.
Hearings on petitions for arrests of the other three defendants in the case followed a similar scenario. The only difference is that General Beglov, Colonel Aleev and businessman Berezhnoy went to jail for two months.
According to Kommersant, businessmen who were engaged in the supply of auto chemicals encountered difficulties in customs clearance. The customs officers offered to settle the issues that had arisen in exchange for paying them $50,000 – the ruble equivalent of this amount appears in the case file.
However, during the transfer of money, all the defendants were detained by FSB operatives. Already during the searches, more than 40 million rubles were seized from the accused. and collections of expensive watches. The legitimacy of their origin is now established by the investigation. Lawyers for the accused and representatives of the committee declined to comment on the case.
It is known that Mr. Veniaminov in the Main Investigative Committee of the ICR specializes in investigating criminal cases on crimes of corruption. Suffice it to say that as a result of his investigations, Oleg Korshunov, former deputy director of the Federal Penitentiary Service, received two terms, and his colleague Valery Maksimenko and ex-governor of the Penza Region Ivan Belozertsev, together with a group of accomplices, recently appeared before the courts.