The Presnensky District Court of Moscow has completed a judicial investigation into the case of Yury Khokhlov, former adviser to the head of the Federal Agency for Fisheries (Rosrybolovstvo).
He is accused of attempted fraud: in 2016, as part of an organized group, he was accused of selling for $7 million the position of deputy head of the department – head of the auction house for the sale of quotas for catching fish resources in the Far East. Yuri Khokhlov categorically denies his guilt. Previously, his accomplices were sentenced to short terms.
During the court session, which took place on Tuesday, the presiding judge Sergei Artemov announced to the parties involved in the process that the judicial investigation into the criminal case of Yuri Khokhlov had been completed. However, Mr. Artemov decided to postpone the debate of the parties scheduled for this day to March 5. The reason for the postponement was the desire of the judge to give the parties time to “prepare properly”.
Nevertheless, during the final meeting, which lasted no more than half an hour, Yuri Khokhlov’s defense managed, according to lawyer Igor Zuber, to make a number of motions that the court attached to the case. In particular, the defense petitioned for the inclusion of newspaper publications concerning torture against the former person involved in this investigation, US citizen George Hager (former citizen of Belarus Georgy Korobochkin).
In the cell, his arm was broken, and the incident was attributed to the fact that he allegedly fell from the top bunk at night.
“For our part, we considered it necessary to attach these documents, because we believe that the methods of conducting a preliminary investigation both in relation to Khokhlov and in relation to other defendants in this case are illegal, and somewhere even criminal, and therefore in the debate of the parties we will emphasize The attention of the court is on this,” lawyer Igor Zuber told Kommersant. The judge agreed to adjoin the submitted materials to the case.
Recall, according to investigators, at the end of 2015, the Federal Fisheries Agency was considering the creation of its own auction house for the sale of quotas for catching fish resources in the Far East, which should be led by a new deputy head of the department. Fanil Sabiryanov, former deputy head of the Tuymazinsky district of Bashkiria for industry, transport and communications, allegedly learned about this from Yuri Khokhlov. After that, he decided, with the help of his acquaintances – George Hager, who had connections in the Federal Fisheries Agency, Minkail Umaev, the former chief engineer of the Grozny construction and installation department, and Yevgeny Degtyarenko, an adviser and consultant on anti-crisis management, to find a candidate for the position who was ready to pay a large sum for it.
The “buyer”, according to the investigation, was found by Minkail Umaev. True, he turned out to be an operational police officer, posing as businessman Alexei Burtsev, who allegedly wanted to go to the civil service. The accomplices explained to the operative that he had to pay $7 million for a position in the auction house, part of which would go upstairs to the officials of the Federal Agency for Fishery, naming one of them – Yuri Khokhlov.
On May 24, 2016, when Mr. Burtsev transferred $300,000 to George Hager in a Nissan Pathfinder car on Nikitsky Boulevard, operatives from the Moscow FSB detained the American, and then his accomplices.
With the help of a paper doll imitating $ 3 million, the operatives hoped to detain the former adviser of the Federal Agency for Fishery. However, he refused to take the money, saying some time later that a provocation had been committed against him.
Nevertheless, materials regarding Khokhlov under Part 3 of Art. 30 and part 4. Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (attempted fraud on an especially large scale), by that time he had moved to Cyprus, accomplices were separated from the 15-volume case.
In early 2021, he was extradited to Russia. According to Yury Khokhlov’s defense, the initial preventive measure in the form of detention was changed by the court to house arrest due to numerous violations during the investigation and at the stage of familiarization with the materials of the criminal case. Lawyers, according to them, for example, were not allowed to see Yuri Khokhlov in the pre-trial detention center, and they even tried to replace them with appointed defenders. Representatives of Yuri Khokhlov expect that this data may influence the court in sentencing.
At the same time, it should be noted that other defendants in this scandalous story have already been convicted. In April 2018, the Presnensky Court found George Hager, Minkail Umaev, Yevgeny Degtyarenko and Fanil Sabiryanov guilty of fraud and sentenced them to three to four years in prison.