Alexei Bashkin, director of Rehabilitation Technologies LLC, was placed under house arrest in Nizhny Novgorod — the court refused to arrest him at the request of the FSB investigator. In April, without documents, Chekists confiscated prostheses for legs made by his company from nine disabled people. The director of the company, who himself walks on a prosthesis, was accused of attempted fraud – allegedly his products did not meet the terms of the contract. The accused is sure that the prostheses are of high quality, and they want to oust his company from the market. The Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Social Fund, which is responsible for providing disabled people with prostheses, refused to execute a state contract with the supplier Ortho-Cosmos. Ortho-Cosmos, in turn, does not trust the expertise carried out at the initiative of the investigation.
The Nizhny Novgorod District Court denied the FSB investigator the arrest of Alexei Bashkin, General Director of Rehabilitation Technologies LLC – before the May holidays, he was detained and accused of attempted fraud in the amount of more than 1 million rubles. along with “unidentified persons”. As previously reported by Kommersant-Privolzhye, in April, security officers seized leg prostheses from nine disabled people in the Nizhny Novgorod region without compiling documents. These products were made by “Technologies of Rehabilitation” under a contract with the Moscow LLC NPF “Orto-Cosmos”, which won the purchase of the Nizhny Novgorod Social Fund for the supply of 115 lower leg prostheses in three stages for 17.5 million rubles.
The regional FSB handed over the seized prostheses to an expert from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who concluded that they did not comply with the terms of the state contract.
Asking to arrest Aleksey Bashkin for two months, the investigator said that the man advised two disabled people who “voluntarily issued prostheses” to operatives and employees of the Social Fund to write statements to the police for fraudulent activities. The Chekists considered this to be an influence on the investigation, suggesting that unknown accomplices could also destroy evidence.
Lawyer Zhanna Berezina objected to the arrest, since Alexei Bashkin is himself an invalid without a leg and walks on a prosthesis, in need of constant therapy. In the pre-trial detention center, where the prosthesis will be taken away from him, the man will not be able to move without outside help. Handing over the defendant’s international passport to the investigator, Berezina’s lawyer emphasized that no one had been harmed by the actions of Alexei Bashkin.
“It is very unfortunate that nine statements of citizens who claimed that their prostheses were stolen from them by persons who in various cases presented themselves either as FSB officers or employees of Ortho-Cosmos or other third-party organizations were not attached to the case file,” Zhanna Berezina added.
After evaluating the arguments of the parties, the judge decided that there were no grounds for the arrest of Alexei Bashkin, and sent him under house arrest, in the care of his wife and brother. The director of the Rehabilitation Technologies company told Kommersant-Privolzhye that he does not plead guilty and suggests that with the help of a criminal case, his company, which, together with Ortho-Cosmos, entered the monopoly market, is being forced out of it. “I believe that the whole thing is sewn with white thread. The people provided with our prostheses were satisfied with them. Our products fully complied with the terms of the state contract, and the price for it was lower. Some people didn’t like it very much … ”, said Alexei Bashkin.
Rehabilitation Technologies prosthetist Dmitry Smirnov added that in one case they changed the product for a client with two amputated feet, making him a more rigid model with foot fixation, since a man would not be able to maintain balance on prostheses with multiaxial hinges. According to the prosthetist, in this case, changing the terms of reference was a necessary measure, but the CCI expert involved in the investigation considered this to be a kind of violation.
On April 27, the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Social Fund decided to unilaterally terminate the state contract for the supply of prostheses with LLC NPF Orto-Cosmos. As follows from the published notice of withdrawal from the contract, the customer referred to the opinion of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry expert on the non-conformity of the products and the fact that the licensed production site in Nizhny Novgorod did not have an “Ortho-Cosmos” sign and did not meet the requirements of an accessible environment for the disabled. Although back in early April, the Social Fund accepted the first batch of 45 manufactured lower leg prostheses from the company without comment, indicating in its conclusion that they meet the requirements of the state contract.
However, according to Alexei Bashkin, the prostheses were not paid for.
When asked about their withdrawal and specific claims against the supplier, the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Social Fund only reported that work to provide disabled people with prostheses was “carried out as planned.”
NPF “Ortho-Cosmos” reported that they could not understand the actions of government agencies, when prostheses were withdrawn from patients without any documents and presented grounds, and then they were sent for some kind of examination, according to the conclusion of which it was impossible to determine what condition the products were in before her start.
“We believe that in case of any complaints, a civilized examination should have been carried out, taking into account the provisions of the concluded state contract. It was necessary to invite both forensic medical experts and independent prosthetists to this examination and conduct an examination with the participation of the manufacturer. What was actually done raises a lot of questions for us. Including, and is this not an order from competitors, ”said Stepan Golovin, First Deputy General Director of the company.