The Investigative Committee of Russia (Investigative Committee of Russia) for the third time opened a criminal case against the employees of LLC ChOO AGIS, who were engaged in the protection of the LSR Group facility on Vasilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg. After the first cancellation by the prosecutor’s office, the head of the department, Alexander Bastrykin, ordered the transfer of materials from the St. Nevertheless, weapons and documents were confiscated from the enterprise.
On Thursday, May 18, according to the Fontanka publication, it became known that another criminal case had been opened on abuse of power by private security guards (Part 1 of Article 203 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), who denied access to the construction site of the facility of the development company LSR on Vasilyevsky island. This is the committee’s third attempt to launch an investigation into the PSC. The two previous ones were unsuccessful: both times the prosecutor’s office did not find anything criminal in the actions of the security service. However, the department of Mr. Bastrykin, apparently, is not going to put the brakes on the situation.
On May 17, investigators from the central office of the ICR raided the office of the AGIS, to which materials from the Main Investigative Directorate for St. Petersburg were transferred. The security forces broke the door to the premises, confiscated documents and several dozen units of officially registered weapons, and threatened that the company’s activities would be terminated in the near future.
In a conversation with a Kommersant correspondent, an employee of the security company said that after the visit of law enforcement officers, all the doors of the offices were sealed, and the employees were transferred to a remote location.
“There is no one in the office, everything is closed and sealed. They said that an inspection was underway, what they are checking there, I don’t know, ”the interlocutor explained.
The dispute between the investigative committee and the prosecutor’s office over the AGIS has been going on since May 15, and the conflict between Mr. Bastrykin and the security service happened a day earlier – last Sunday. Alexander Bastrykin personally, without bodyguards and in civilian clothes, tried to get to the construction site of the Northern Alluvium, but the Chopovites, even after the certificate was presented, did not let the General of Justice of Russia go beyond the checkpoint. Some time later, the head of the TFR arrived at the scene already together with the OMON fighters. Only after that did he manage to get to the site where the developer is building the New Vasilyevsky residential area.
On the same day, Mr. Bastrykin signed a decree on the initiation of criminal proceedings against security officers and the developer, who is charged with violating environmental protection rules in the course of work (Article 246 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The first case was canceled by the deputy prosecutor of St. Petersburg Valery Uzlyakov, the second by the first deputy prosecutor general of the Russian Federation Anatoly Razinkin, who himself comes from the committee.
As Kommersant was previously told in LSR, the company sees no legal grounds for initiating a criminal case due to construction in the northern part of Vasilyevsky Island due to the lack of evidence of illegal actions, but they will use “all legal means to respond to this situation.” The representative of the developer also pointed out that the chairman of the ICR did not warn about his visit in advance and was dressed in civilian clothes, in connection with which the security of the sensitive facility was forced to stop the visitor for security reasons.
