The Moscow City Court released Alexander Verkhoturov, co-founder of the First Mortgage Company, which issued microcredits to Muscovites, from custody under the ban on certain actions. The investigation believes that he created the conditions under which 20 people could not repay the debt and lost their apartments worth almost 160 million rubles. The defense insists that the defendant was engaged in ordinary business activities, and all decisions on the sale of real estate of citizens are based on the decisions of the capital’s courts that have entered into force.
In the Moscow City Court, the Investigation Department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the Central Administrative District of the capital petitioned for an extension of the arrest for a period of more than a year of the co-founder and former general director of First Mortgage Company LLC (PZK LLC) Alexander Verkhoturov. He was arrested on April 8, 2022 as part of a case of fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and has been in a pre-trial detention center since then.
Conditions of “no return”
As part of it, 20 Muscovites were recognized as victims, most of whom were clients of the First Mortgage Company, which issued microloans to citizens. In total, Verkhoturov is charged with 12 criminal episodes committed from 2017 to 2021 – five completed episodes of fraud (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and seven episodes of attempted fraud (part 3 of article 30, part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ). The investigation alleges that by issuing loans to families (as a rule, people took out loans for apartment renovations) secured by real estate, Verkhoturov, together with “unidentified accomplices”, created conditions that prevented people from repaying the debt. They worsened every month, the debt grew like a snowball, and borrowers could not repay the loan. As a result, the company went to court with claims for foreclosure on property. It was sold at auction. As a result, several families of Muscovites were left without apartments, and one family lost a house with a plot in the Moscow region. Two of the 12 episodes concerned not even loans issued by PZK LLC, but the rights of claim purchased by Verkhoturov for the apartments of two Muscovites who had taken loans from the Derzhava bank at one time, which they could not repay. The investigation estimated the total damage in the case at 159.5 million rubles – this is the market value of all real estate objects involved in the case. Ownership rights for seven of them did not have time to transfer to new owners, since Rosreestr did not have time to register them due to the fact that the Ministry of Internal Affairs seized the documents.
Insisting on the further stay of the person involved in the pre-trial detention center, the representative of the investigation argued that, while at large, Alexander Verkhoturova could hide, continue to engage in criminal activities or put pressure on witnesses and victims. He asked to leave Verkhoturov in the pre-trial detention center for another two months, until July 7th. The prosecutor supported him.
Business crime
In turn, the defense asked the investigators to dismiss the petition, arguing that there were no grounds for this. So, the businessman’s lawyer, senior partner of the Belsky and Partners law office Dmitry Pozin drew the attention of the court to the fact that his client would no longer be able to interfere with the investigation, since it had already been completed, his client in early March began to familiarize himself with 100 volumes of the criminal case. In addition, the lawyer drew the attention of the court to the fact that Alexander Verkhoturov is actually charged with committing crimes in the field of entrepreneurial activity, and Article 108 of the Code of Criminal Procedure prohibits the arrest of businessmen under such circumstances. He asked the investigators to reject the motions of the investigation and choose a measure of restraint for his client, not related to detention.
After weighing the arguments of the parties, Moscow City Court judge Andrey Suvorov did just that, releasing Alexander Verkhoturov from the pre-trial detention center, where he spent almost a year, under a ban on certain actions until June 7 in his apartment in the center of the capital. He is forbidden to leave the dwelling from 23 pm to 7 am.
The defense lawyer found it difficult to answer Business FM’s question about how long it would take for his client to complete familiarization with the case, after which the prosecutor’s office would approve the indictment and the case would be sent to court. He believes that there was no corpus delicti in the actions of the entrepreneur, and the investigation could not establish the method of theft. “We believe that there are fatal violations in the case and it is impossible to take it to court in this form,” Dmitry Pozin told Business FM.
Absence of enslaving conditions?
In his opinion, the argument of the investigation that the businessman created the conditions for the impossibility of returning loans to the victims is not true. “Verkhoturov had an office where one could come to repay the loan, all the victims had a current account to which money could be transferred. In addition, all the victims could apply to a notary and put money on deposit with him, ”said the defender. He noted that the courts of general jurisdiction, where the First Mortgage Company filed claims for foreclosure on the property of citizens, checked the bondage of the conditions of transactions concluded with it, and in all episodes the courts did not find signs of bondage. All these decisions have entered into force, and, according to the lawyer, they have a prejudicial significance for the case, that is, they are binding on other courts without checking the facts. This, according to Pozin, testifies to the innocence of his client. According to the lawyer, non-repayment of the loan is entirely on the conscience of the borrowers, most of whom were simply not given funds in commercial banks. Some of them misused loans. “So, one of the borrowers, according to our data, having taken a loan of 1.5 million rubles, spent it to take the lady of the heart to Monaco. He just skipped the money and did not return the loan, ”the lawyer said.