The Izmailovsky Court of Moscow issued a verdict in the case of the leaders of the company “DIA Capital”, consonant in name with the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA). Former consultant of the capital’s audit company Dmitry Silonov, a resident of the Moscow region Denis Anisimov and ex-assistant lawyer Vera Guseva, assuring that their organization is allegedly closely connected with the DIA, suggested that the Moscow Kristall plant, Russia’s largest producer of alcoholic beverages, restructure the debt, arose before the subsequently bankrupt OFK-Bank. At the same time, their goal, according to the verdict, was the theft of 350 million rubles. under a fake contract of assignment of the right to claim (cession). Having found all three guilty of attempted fraud, the court sentenced Messrs. Silonov and Anisimov to four and a half years in prison each, and Vera Guseva to three years. The defendants intend to appeal the verdict.
During the debate held on the eve of the verdict, the state prosecutor asked that all the defendants be found guilty and that Dmitry Silonov and Denis Anisimov be sentenced to five and a half years in a penal colony each, and Vera Guseva to four years. Also, the prosecutor’s office considered, the court must satisfy the claim of the Kristall plant for 20 million rubles.
As already reported by Kommersant, a criminal case on the fact of an attempt on a particularly large-scale fraud (part 3 of article 30 and part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) was initiated by the Main Investigative Committee of the ICR for Moscow in March 2020 after representatives of the plant contacted the investigating authorities ” Crystal”.
The applicants reported that in 2019 the management of the enterprise entered into negotiations with the employees of DIA Capital on the restructuring of the plant’s debt to OFK-Bank in the amount of 510 million rubles.
These funds were received to pay excise taxes, but were eventually spent on other purposes. At the same time, representatives of Kristall claimed that the leaders of DIA Capital assured them that they had considerable experience in managing non-core assets from state-owned banks, in connection with which they were instructed to restructure the plant’s debt to DIA, since OFK-Bank went bankrupt in 2018 year.
Negotiations with Dmitry Silonov, Denis Anisimov and Vera Guseva continued until December 2019. But then the management of Kristall had suspicions about the legality of the intentions of DIA Capital, and they turned to law enforcement officers. They considered that Messrs. Silonov, Anisimov and Guseva did not have a real opportunity to resolve the issue of debt restructuring, which means that we are talking about an attempt at fraud. During the proceedings, it turned out that the suspects falsified a letter on behalf of the DIA, from which it followed that the agency was assigning the right to claim under loan agreements to a third party, the AS Accounting company, controlled by the defendants in the case. In pursuance of this agreement, the plant undertook to transfer 350 million rubles to this company.
Under the control of law enforcement agencies, the company transferred 20 million rubles to the company, after which detentions began.
Subsequently, the defense of the defendants claimed that there had been a provocation, since the representatives of the plant expressed satisfaction with the work of their business partners even after they filed an application against them. However, speaking in the debate, the state prosecutor emphasized that, in his opinion, there could be no question of any provocation, since the intent to steal funds from the management of “ASV Capital” arose before the employees of “Crystal” turned to law enforcement agencies, and an operational experiment related to the transfer of 20 million rubles. “AS Accounting” was required only for documenting criminal activity. This position was supported by a representative of the plant, who simultaneously filed a lawsuit against the defendants for 20 million rubles.
The defense demanded that the defendants be acquitted. Thus, Mr. Silonov’s lawyer, Denis Romashov, stated that, in his opinion, neither the investigation nor the prosecutor’s office presented to the court evidence of a causal relationship between the actions that Dmitry Silonov committed to fulfill the instructions of the Kristall management, and those charged with him and other defendants in the crime. Also, according to the lawyers, no damage was caused to Kristall, since the transferred money was the personal funds of the general director of the plant and was returned to him, – accordingly, the civil claim should be rejected. Lawyers, in addition, argued that when the plant faced the threat of bankruptcy in 2019, its management turned to ASV Capital LLC regarding the restructuring of the debt to DIA, but it itself began to drag out the process, since it first had to complete the execution of a certain order . And in order not to fulfill their obligations to ASV Capital, the management of the enterprise, according to the defense, wrote a statement about the allegedly impending fraud.
However, the court sided with the prosecution, although it appointed the defendants shorter terms than the prosecutor requested. As an additional punishment, each of the defendants was fined 220,000 rubles. The claim of the plant was satisfied.
Lawyers said they would appeal the verdict.