Bankruptcy cases were deleted from the life of Judge Gorodov on 13 summer

From 2010 to 2017, this “arbiter of fate” accepted gifts from an entrepreneur named Dolgov, an alleged representative of a criminal family specializing in courts, for the necessary verdicts. It is known that other employees of the arbitration are also tied to the latter, and the activity of the “decided” may well still continue.

Nobody liked the timing

The verdict against the judge of the Arbitration Court of the Altai Territory Alexei Gorodov will be considered in the appellate instance. According to the case card on the website of the Central District Court of Barnaul, both sides of the process filed a corresponding application – both the prosecutor’s office and the defendant’s lawyers.

The date of the consideration of the case is not indicated, but it is known that by May 5, the applicants had to eliminate the shortcomings in the submitted documents.

On April 10 this year, the same court sentenced Gorodov to 13 years in prison to be served in a penal colony with a strict regime, as well as a fine of 30 million rubles and deprivation of the right to hold positions in government bodies for a period of 10 years.

The judge was found guilty of committing 6 crimes under Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 of Art. 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (taking a bribe), the prosecutor’s office reports.

According to the decision of the court, it was recognized that Gorodov, in exchange for money and property, in bankruptcy cases of legal entities and individuals under his jurisdiction, took decisions that were beneficial to them in the interests of one of the parties. The violations continued from May 2010 to January 2017. As a result, according to the website of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the judge received about 4.5 million rubles, and also purchased an expensive car at a reduced price in the amount of more than 350 thousand rubles.

The court confiscated money equal to the amount of bribes to the state.

There is something to object

However, many details may become known during the meetings of the Court of Appeal – after all, there was no point in the defense filing a complaint if it had not had additional arguments in store. And the main one can be predicted even now – nowhere in the materials of the prosecutor’s office does it say that Gorodov was caught red-handed in at least one of the incriminated episodes. Everything is based on the testimony of a man who has been in a colony for several years on another case.

“There is procedural terrorism in this criminal case. For three years, confessions were squeezed out of me so that I would confess to something that, in principle, does not exist, ”Gorodov said in his last speech.

The uncertainty of the outcome of the case is also understood at the official place of work of the convict. According to the official website of the Arbitration Court of the Altai Territory, Gorodov was not fired – his powers were only suspended by the decision of the qualification board of judges in September 2020.

Account for millions

The crimes incriminated to Gorodov were revealed by operational officers of the FSB Directorate of Russia for the Altai Territory, and employees of the regional investigation department of the Investigative Committee were investigating him. According to the IC, back in 2010, Gorodov first received a bribe in the form of a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado 120 car from a citizen named Dolgov for general patronage in cases of introducing bankruptcy proceedings against a legal entity. According to the file of arbitration cases, there is indeed one case in the proceedings of this judge in the indicated year, where the list of applicants includes IP Dolgov V.N. – on the bankruptcy of ZhKKH-Vodosnabzhenie, r.p. Annunciation of the Altai Territory. The company was then declared bankrupt due to a debt of 2.8 million rubles.

According to Seldon Basis, an individual entrepreneur Viktor Nikolayevich Dolgov, specializing in real estate management, is registered in the specified locality. However, there are no claims against him from law enforcement agencies, interim measures or blocked accounts.

The following episodes of the Gorodov case refer to 2016-2017, when the judge made decisions for bribes of 500 thousand rubles for each judicial act in the interests of Dolgov, receiving a total of 2 million rubles. In addition, during the specified period of time, for making a decision to refuse to satisfy the applications of bankruptcy trustees in two arbitration cases relating to a real estate object, Gorodov received from the entrepreneur through an intermediary a bribe in installments totaling 2 million 500 thousand rubles, which is an especially large amount. And during this period, the namesake of the above entrepreneur appears in arbitration cases – Alexey Borisovich Dolgov, co-owner of Vita MT LLC, also registered in the Altai Territory, which specialized in insurance activities, and today is undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. A person with that name appears in the case on the completion of the bankruptcy proceedings at Siberia Zvezda LLC – the claim was satisfied by the court and appeals to higher instances did not produce results. According to the Legal Report, it is Alexei Dolgov who is the defendant in the case, in which Gorodov was nevertheless convicted.

However, the list of namesakes is still not complete. In the case against the Federal Tax Service and JSC “Cement”, where Gorodov also chaired, a certain Dolgov Anton Alekseevich acted as a representative of third parties. It is difficult to get rid of the impression that for a decade a real criminal family operated in the Altai Territory, resolving issues in the courts. And although one of them was nevertheless prosecuted in another case, the rest may well continue their activities today.

Not the first judge

Aleksey Gorodov is not the first representative of the Arbitration Court of the Altai Territory, caught in corruption, in which the name of Dolgov appears. Back in 2020, Vladislav Kolesnikov was found guilty on similar charges and sentenced to 7 years in prison. It was about a lawsuit filed by an unnamed legal entity against the Interdistrict IFTS No. 10 for the Altai Territory to invalidate the requirement to invalidate additional personal income tax charges and a fine.

“In May 2017, a lawyer representing the interests of the Company offered the former arbitration manager Dolgov to act as an intermediary in transferring a bribe in the form of money to Judge Kolesnikov for making a decision in favor of the Company. Dolgov, in turn, turned to Judge Terry to also mediate in the transfer of a bribe for a certain monetary reward. Having agreed, judge Terry (Ruslan – ed.) offered his colleague Kolesnikov 800 thousand rubles as a bribe for the adoption of a judicial act on invalidating the decisions of the Federal Tax Service Inspectorate, to which he received consent, ”the IC reports.

Dolgov received 1.5 million rubles for his services then, Ruslan Terry – 700 thousand rubles. And later, in 2019, both received sentences of 4 years in prison plus a fine of 75 million rubles and 7 years in prison and a fine of 30 million rubles, respectively.

The amounts are rising

It is known that despite the efforts of law enforcement agencies, the average amount of a bribe in the Altai Territory at the end of 2022, he set a record – 242.4 thousand rubles. A total of 84 episodes were registered with a total amount of illegal monetary rewards of 20.4 million rubles.

The average corrupt official in the region is a man aged 30-49, most often working in the internal affairs bodies, a little less often in the Federal Penitentiary Service, executive authorities of the region or local self-government.