“Come when they kill” and other features of the “Merlion case”

An interesting story was aired on the program “Man and the Law” on the First. In 2015, Vyacheslav Simonenko, General Director of Merlion, a large IT distributor, refused to continue dealings with business partners. According to him, they disagreed hard, since the former co-founders underpaid $ 4.5 million. Simonenko insisted that the money be returned to him, but the defendants Vladislav Mangutov, Alexander Abramov and Oleg Karchev had their own point of view on the return of funds.

And in order to calm the annoyed partner, the former associates decided to liquidate him. The assassination was entrusted to the killers. It all happened on the night of September 5, in 2015, in the suburbs. In Krasnogorsk, not verbal threats flew at the ex-director of the Merlion, but real bottles stuffed with napalm.

There were two attackers. A foam block was placed in front of the victim’s house. One of the killers climbed the structure and began to scatter bottles with incendiary contents in the yard. Miraculously, no one was hurt in the fire that broke out. About that experienced day, when Simonenko himself, his wife and two young daughters almost said goodbye to life, is still reminiscent of a black spot on the wall of the house. In 2019, the attempt was repeated at a restaurant in Odintsovo.

In fact, the injured party wrote an appeal to the valiant police, but the case fell apart abnormally. In 2015, the materials simply evaporated somewhere – they disappeared, period. Since then, the businessman has turned everywhere: he wrote to the Federation Council, to the Prosecutor General’s Office, tried to attract attention with a rally with a poster near the Supreme Court – all in vain.

This was the case until February 2020. Finally, after leaving the post of deputy head of the Investigative Committee of Russia for the Moscow Region Alexander Sarafanov, a colonel by rank, things got off the ground.

One of the arsonists was found. The man did not hide who hired him. It turned out that Boris Levin, the head of the Merlion’s security service, was the customer.

The testimony became the basis for the detention of Abramov, Mangutov and Karchev. And then a judicial miracle happened: all the organizers, as if nothing had happened, were at large. Witnesses in the case began to talk about the pressure they are subjected to during the investigation. As a result, in 2021, all potential defendants were released.

Boris Levin, the direct organizer of the contract crime, was also released. And this despite the fact that there are testimonies of a hired killer against the former partner of the co-founder of an IT company.