In the Vakhitovsky District Court, court hearings have started on the case of the former deputy head of the regional department of the Social Insurance Fund of the Russian Federation for the Republic of Tatarstan and the former chairman of the auction commission for procurement of the department, Gennady Titov. The official detained by the investigatory committee and the UBEP is accused of abusing his authority and artificially interfering with the business activities of RSS-Med LLC. This company supplied Tatarstan invalids with urine and colostomy bags. The prosecution is sure that the official deliberately gave orders, substituting one company in favor of his friend’s company. Titov himself denies everything and is sure that he acted strictly within the law. Read more in the BUSINESS Online report.
Who got hurt
The start of the trial in the case of Gennady Titov, who worked as Pavel Lokhanov’s deputy in the regional department of the FSS for the Republic of Tatarstan, turned out to be, as they say, “traditional”. The accused himself was the first to appear in the courtroom, accompanied by his lawyer, ex-investigator of the ICR Vadim Maksimov. He was already followed by the victim in the case, representing the interests of RSS-Med LLC Andrey Korolev. This is a former member of the Public Chamber of the Republic of Tatarstan, ex-chairman of the commission on legal issues and public expertise. As it turned out, the former owners of the company, which “sent” Lokhanov to jail for 6 years, have recently left the founders. Since July 2022, Korolev has become the sole and full owner of RSS-Med LLC.
By the way, in the case of Titov, not only this company, but also several other individuals are listed among the victims – the same people with disabilities who did not receive their means of rehabilitation at the beginning of last year. There are three of them: some Buzinsky, Zagurenko and Shayakhmetova. According to Judge Marina Sharonova, they cannot attend the hearings in person due to obvious circumstances. Therefore, the first step was to legalize the decision to consider the case without their physical participation. And no one was against this, except for only one thing – the lawyer Maksimov made a motion to exclude these citizens from the number of victims at all, since they should have received the prescribed means of rehabilitation, if you look at it, they should have been under a different contract, and not according to that that appears in the Titov case.
They did not turn down the motion of the defense, but in essence they decided not to consider it yet, but to wait for the judicial investigation and familiarization with the materials. Before all this, it was first necessary to hear accusations against Titov, thereby opening a judicial investigation.
The version of the prosecution: removing competitors
What is Titov accused of? This was reported in detail by the state prosecutor Ruslan Baibikov. “Using his official powers contrary to the interests of the service, acting out of selfish and other personal interests, he abused his official powers by creating artificial restrictions on RSS-Med LLC,” the prosecutor began to read the accusation.
The story is rooted in the events of February 4, 2021. Then a contract was signed between the Tatarstan regional department of the FSS represented by Lokhanov, on the one hand, and RSS-Med, represented by director Tatyana Solovieva, on the other. According to this contract, the company was supposed to supply urine and colostomy bags to needy disabled people in 2021. At the same time, it followed from the terms of the contract that the FSS was obliged to transfer the register of these very disabled people to whom it was necessary to deliver rehabilitation funds within two working days to RSS-Med LLC. In addition, the fund, according to the contract, was supposed to carry out a random check of the goods for their compliance with the terms of reference, after which they would sign an inspection report and send it to RSS-Med within two working days. After that, the company had to deliver everything to the recipients in a month (some – even within 7 days).
As follows from the announced accusation, Titov prevented LLC RSS-Med from fulfilling its obligations in full under this contract. The motive for this, in addition to selfish interest, was Titov’s friendly contacts with Andrei Dulalaev, the head of Iskra LLC (now Phoenix LLC), the main competitor of RSS-Med at the auction. They say that Titov and Dulalaev are resting together, and he provides patronage to his comrade. The deputy fund manager, it followed from the prosecution, deliberately violated the rules of the contract with RSS-Med LLC in order to set them up and disrupt their delivery dates, so that they would later be fined and included in the list of unscrupulous suppliers, which would automatically close the doors for them to participate in public procurement . Roughly speaking, in this way they allegedly wanted to remove Iskra’s competitors.
What did Titov do? He, the prosecution is sure, specifically instructed his employee, who was preparing the register of recipients of rehabilitation means under an agreement with RSS-Med LLC, to exclude disabled people from several regions of the republic. In particular, it was about removing from the register data on requests from Nizhnekamsk, Chistopol, Aksubaevsky, Alekseevsky, Alkeevsky, Novosheshminsky, Nurlatsky, Spassky and Cheremshansky districts. The employee allegedly complied with Titov’s order, and the register was corrected. Then the list was sent to RSS-Med – the prosecution notes that it was much later than the deadline.
“Titov understood that information about disabled people living in Nizhnekamsk, Chistopol, Aksubaevsky, Alekseevsky, Alkeevsky, Novosheshminsky, Nurlatsky, Spassky, Cheremshansky districts would be transferred to the representative of RSS-Med LLC later as part of the execution of the state contract, and realized that this will lead to an increase in the time and financial costs of RSS-Med LLC for the delivery of technical means of rehabilitation to people in need,” the state prosecutor said today in court. In November 2021, when the results of the contract were being summed up, a claim was sent to RSS-Med for a penalty of 80,000 rubles for “violation of the delivery time of goods to people with disabilities”.
Obstacles in auctions and the accused asking for words
But that’s not all. Further, at the end of the same year, the FSS played two more contracts: one for the supply of absorbent sheets for a total of 31 million rubles, the other for the supply of adult diapers for 188 million rubles. Both contracts were played on December 17, 2021 between RSS-Med LLC and Phoenix LLC. The first won, because they made a more economical offer. And everything seems to be fair, but the auction commission of the FSS, which was headed by Titov, found violations in the application of RSS-Med LLC, and it was removed from the auction, or rather, they were declared invalid. The reason for this was that the company’s application did not contain certificates of origin of goods of the Eurasian Economic Union sample.
“RSS-Med” was not satisfied with this situation, and the company turned to the OFAS of Russia for the Republic of Tatarstan. They agreed that the application was rejected unreasonably. When they began to understand, it followed from the voiced accusation, it turned out that initially some members of the auction commission did not want to create obstacles for the entrepreneur, Titov allegedly insisted on this as chairman of the commission.
In the first and second episodes of this story, as established by the investigation, there are signs of Titov committing a crime under Part 1 of Art. 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Abuse of official powers”) and Part 1 of Art. 169 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Obstruction of legitimate entrepreneurial or other activities”). The maximum sanction of the first article implies a punishment of up to 4 years in prison, the second – compulsory work up to 360 hours.
Titov did not admit his guilt in the alleged crime in court. “No (I do not admit guilt). I acted within the framework of the current legislation, I did not give any instructions to my subordinates. He only demanded the fulfillment of the conditions of the concluded state contracts, ”he said in court.
After the accusation was announced, prosecutor Baibikov proposed not to deviate from the canons and interrogate the victims, witnesses, study the materials, and then give the floor to the accused. Titov himself and his defender asked to be given the floor immediately so that they could immediately and as fully as possible indicate their position. And the answer was definitely that. But more about that later – the court remained on its own, and the interrogation of the accused was postponed until later.
The next meeting will take place on April 12. It is expected that the court will interrogate the owner of RSS-Med LLC Korolev, and also determine the status of other victims.
