Alla Laletina was sentenced to 8 years
Not only money, but also luxury items – a Lou Vuitton suitcase, a Persian carpet – were accepted in exchange for patronage by the former top manager of Rostec. Alla Laletina. The prosecution proved these facts in court, which on November 27 sentenced her to eight years in prison. According to the case materials, being the director for legal support and corporate governance of a state corporation, the accused received donations worth almost 67 million rubles from the head of the Novosibirsk artificial fiber plant. The bribery case is not the first in Laletina’s career; she was previously accused of particularly large-scale fraud due to employment of “dead souls”.
Particularly heavy luxury
On November 27, the Khamovnichesky District Court of the capital sentenced Alla Laletina, ex-director for legal support and corporate governance of the Rostec state corporation, to eight years in a general regime colony. As an additional punishment, she was given a fine of 133 million rubles – twice the amount of bribes she received. To ensure repayment of this fine, the court seized funds in Laletina’s accounts, her real estate and cars totaling more than 100 million rubles.
During the trial, the prosecution managed to prove that from February 2018 to April 2019, the former top manager of the state corporation received gifts totaling 66.8 million rubles from the general director of the Novosibirsk Artificial Fiber Plant (NZIV) Rustam Izmailov. According to the indictment, the head of the enterprise not only gave the official money, but also reimbursed expenses for a vacation in Turkey in the amount of 3.1 million rubles, paid for the purchase of a Persian carpet for 3 million rubles, and gave the top manager a Lou Vuitton suitcase and a juicer for her mother.
From the case materials it follows that Laletina demanded that Izmailov pay her 6 million rubles a month for general patronage. In particular, she promised to provide funding for the NZIV modernization program.
According to the investigation, Ms. Laletina immediately told her interlocutor the amount and payment schedule: 6 million rubles each. monthly. […] In addition, at different times, according to the case materials, the accused demanded payment of wages to her two drivers of 60 thousand rubles each. monthly, as well as “provision of other services of a property nature,” including the transfer of funds in the amount of 3 million rubles. to purchase a Persian carpet, pay for a Bork juicer, buy a Lou Vuitton suitcase, pay for a vacation in Turkey for a total of RUB 3,189,061. “Laletina’s request to drive a Lexus car to the territory of the Italian Republic, the island of Sardinia, for a vacation and back to Moscow was also fulfilled in response to the demands previously put forward to Izmailov,” the verdict says.
During the debate between the parties on November 16, the state prosecutor asked for 10 years in prison for the accused and a fine of three times the bribe.
Laletina did not admit guilt. Her lawyers called the claims absurd and pointed out that in the case “there is not a single fact of recording the transfer of funds.” The case was based on the confession of Izmailov, who was issued a confession, and as a result he was released from criminal liability for giving a bribe.
The practice of exemption from punishment upon confession in cases of bribery is a stimulating factor aimed at identifying such corruption crimes, the lawyer explained to Izvestia Andrey Grivtsov.
“The person who gave the bribe may be exempt from criminal liability if he contacts law enforcement agencies about the fact of the bribe,” he said. — These norms are aimed at ensuring that law enforcement agencies can promptly identify facts of bribery.
Lawyer Alexander Shvetsov, in turn, believes that there is now a tendency to tighten criminal prosecution for crimes related to bribes.
— Previously, such cases were initiated as a result of operational investigative measures against the subject or after an appeal from a person from whom a bribe was extorted. Now, sometimes just testimony or wiretapping is enough for this,” the expert said.
The lawyer emphasized that any mention of the possible fact of receiving or giving a bribe may become the basis for initiating a case of attempted crime.
Three years in custody
Laletina was sent under house arrest back in December 2020 after another charge was brought – fraud on an especially large scale. According to it, Laletina and former deputy general directors of the defense research and production concern Tekhmash Lyudmila Zhivotovskaya and Ekaterina Tyutyunikova hired several employees, but the employment was fictitious – the defendants in the case used the salaries of the absent employees for their own needs.
Laletina served house arrest until May 2021 in a private house in the village of Landshaft near Rublevo-Uspenskoye Highway. However, after charges were filed in the bribery case, the investigation went to court with a petition for her arrest, which was granted. Now the former top manager is in pre-trial detention center No. 6, the only pre-trial detention center for women in Moscow.
Judge Diana Mishchenko said that Laletina’s time in custody from May 25, 2021 will be credited.
The case of Zhivotovskaya and Tyutyunikova on fraud has been considered since June 2023 by the Golovinsky court in separate proceedings from Laletina.
How do officials take bribes?
Bribes in the form of travel vouchers are not uncommon in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). Over the past few years, similar charges have been brought against several officials.
For example, in February 2020, ex assistant to Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich became a defendant in a criminal case for the fact that she gave a bribe in the form of vouchers to Thailand and the Dominican Republic. And in November 2023, a former official of the Krasnoyarsk Construction Supervision Authority was sentenced to seven years for traveling at the expense of a bribe-giver to the island of Sardinia.
Among the material goods illegally obtained by officials and officials are cars and household appliances. For example, a former St. Petersburg deputy in August 2022 received nine years in prison behind bribe with an Audi Q7, and the judge of the Arbitration Court of the Altai Territory was sentenced to 13 years in prison in April of this year – he accepted a Toyota Land Cruer “as a gift.” In the same month, the court imposed a fine of 400 thousand rubles on a General Staff colonel for trying to receive a bribe with a Bosch washing machine.
Also in July of this year, the investigation into the criminal case of the ex-deputy head of the financial and economic department of the Russian Guard was completed Nikolai Kopytov. According to investigators, the colonel could have received 10 million rubles and a coffee machine from one of the managers of a company that sewed uniforms.