Criminal investigation team: who is the organized criminal group in the “Hermes case”

An investigation is underway in relation to the Life-of-Good team, the Best Way cooperative, associated with the foreign investment company Hermes as an organized criminal community, but in fact the criminal community is the investigative team and those who ordered the criminal case.

Criminal case No. 12101400038003637 has been under investigation by the Main Investigation Department of the St. Petersburg Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs under the direct supervision of the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for almost two years – charges have been brought in the final version to pseudo-complete the investigation – pseudo, because the preliminary investigation will most likely be resumed in order to continue to keep the accused in prison as hostages, besides, the investigation has nothing to go to court with.

Fake completion of the investigation

The preliminary investigation has been hastily completed since the August deadline for the detention of the four accused. Realizing that it would not be possible to complete the investigation within the terms of detention established by the Code of Criminal Procedure, the investigators organized a fake ending of the investigation – in violation of all the norms of a possible Code of Criminal Procedure.

Investigators of the Main Directorate of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region grossly violated the rights of the accused. They were simply not given the opportunity to read the accusation – they were given from 15 minutes to half an hour to write 69-73 pages for the accusation. In addition, they were deprived of the opportunity provided by the Criminal Procedure Code to testify after the arraignment. In some cases, a forged protocol of the interrogation of the accused was drawn up – with a remark that the accused and his lawyer refused to sign the document, and the investigator refuses to familiarize with this protocol. Thus, the accused are deprived of the right to defense, and the rights of lawyers are also grossly violated.

Criminal actions were committed by investigators of the Main Directorate of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region E.A. Sapetova, E.V. Garaev, R.S. Esaulenko, G.A. Konovalov, A.V. Maltsev, A.A. Kharchenko, under the supervision of the head of the investigation team, Deputy. Head of the Main Directorate of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for St. Petersburg and Leningradskaya A.N. Vinokurov.

Custom institution of criminal case

The investigation was conducted with criminal violations from the very beginning. Prior to the initiation of a criminal case, operational-search activities were carried out for two years – there was no material for initiating a case.

And all this time, according to sources, a messenger from one of the very influential financial structures went to the St. Petersburg Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs – he demanded to initiate a criminal case.

And in 2021, the courts managed to agree on everything. First, the testimony of the IT specialist Naboychenko appears – who was first detained by the police of St. Petersburg, and then, after receiving the necessary testimony, was released, as well as the testimony of the driver Komarov.

Naboichenko, having left after the arrest, brought down all Hermes websites, creating the appearance of a scam for this company, and made loud public revelations that Hermes is a fraudulent structure, and Life of Good and the Best Way cooperative are tied to it.
Komarov was recruited by UEBiPK even earlier – and, although he was only carrying out minor assignments, he stated in his testimony that in packages with gifts from the regions, which he, in particular, transported for the founder of Best Way and the head of Life-of-Good » Roman Vasilenko, in fact, there was unaccounted for cash.

He has been secretly filming since 2019, but only managed to record, for example, the transfer of Roman Vasilenko’s personal funds, from which taxes were paid, for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s participation in the Synergy Global Forum 2019.

After Hermes stopped working as a result of the collapse of the payment infrastructure, there are also allegations of fraud by several Hermes clients and former shareholders of the Best Way cooperative from only one city – from Ukhta. By an amazing coincidence, the founders of the Vera housing cooperative, an exact copy of the Best Way cooperative, which, by the way, is still working, although it has the same properties that are blamed by the Central Bank and the prosecutor’s office on the Best Way cooperative.

And by no less surprising coincidence, they gave testimony not to the police from the Komi Republic, but to the detective of the UEBiPK from St. Petersburg, Mashevsky. One of those who wrote the statement – Bolyan, in front of witnesses, right in the courtroom loudly boasted of his friendship with Mashevsky.

As a result, there were 198 such statements from clients from Ukhta and other cities, they relate exclusively to Hermes – although the Hermes company has restored its activities, is paying off its obligations, and there is simply no event of a crime.

hostage taking

In February last year, four citizens were taken into custody. Three are employees of the administrative and financial apparatus, who had nothing to do with decision-making, and have never been prosecuted. The purpose of the detention was simple – to get evidence for the leadership. But no evidence could be obtained. Then the goal was changed – to keep them as long as possible, without carrying out any investigative actions, in order to either lead to a breakdown and slander themselves and others, or to get the defense to agree with the demands of the accusers and release the hostages.

In the spring, three more citizens-entrepreneurs were arrested in connection with their entrepreneurial activities. Moreover, one of them is Anatoly Nalivan, the most severe cardiological patient, who was almost constantly in the hospital. His release is a matter of preserving his health and life. But in exchange for this, the investigation requires the necessary testimony both from the arrested and from those who did not fall into the clutches of the so-called justice.

Attempt to seize co-op assets

From the very beginning, all the incriminated episodes concerned the foreign company Hermes – the investigation is making efforts to “tie” the Best Way cooperative, a Russian legal entity with assets of 16 billion rubles, with accounts constantly replenished due to regular payments from shareholders, to force them to answer for the obligations of the alleged victims – which proves the custom-made nature of the criminal case and the collusion of the investigation with those who decided to seize assets using fake statements about fraud.

Hence the accusations of the cooperative and the Life of Good company that it was with Hermes in the same holding – and had a common management, completely absurd, since the cooperative is a non-profit self-governing organization, it has no shareholders, and the leaders and owners of Hermes are foreign Citizens, this company has never had a single leader, not only with the cooperative, but also with Life of Good.

The investigation began to tell the courts about the thousands of victims, that the total amount of damage exceeds 16 billion rubles – and thus justified the need to seize all the assets of the cooperative.

But the amount of theft confirmed by statements turned out to be very modest in relation to assets: despite a year and a half of investigation, not counting the period of conducting operational-search activities, only 232 million rubles were confirmed by the statements of the victims.
All statements relate only to Hermes. There were attempts to find episodes relating to the cooperative – but they turned out to be so obviously far-fetched: they directly contradicted the agreements with the cooperative that they were not even included in the final versions of the charges.

Failure to comply with court decisions

Failure to comply with court orders is a criminal offense that has been investigated several times. Only once, at the beginning of last summer, did the investigation comply with the decision of the St. Petersburg City Court, which lifted the arrest from most of the cooperative’s funds, since the amount of damage claimed was many times less than the amount of funds in the cooperative’s accounts. This short period allowed the cooperative to settle accounts with 216 shareholders – despite the opposition of banks in transferring funds.

The August decision of the St. Petersburg City Court, which called into question the validity of the investigation documents for interim measures and, on this basis, removed the arrest from the accounts, was no longer executed. Despite this decision, the investigation went to the court of first instance and again seized the accounts, without informing the court that earlier, on the same grounds, the investigation had denied the application to freeze the accounts.

In March, the Primorsky District Court refused to extend the arrest of two of the three accounts of the cooperative – and the investigation directly blocked the execution of this court decision, issuing appropriate instructions to the security services of banks. The non-cash funds of the cooperative were declared material evidence – although the ruling of the Constitutional Court clearly states that non-cash funds cannot be material evidence.

The desire to collapse the cooperative

The investigation blocked the accounts of the Best Way cooperative and its activities for more than a year, literally smashed the office three times with the seizure of all documentation and servers, did not allow payments to shareholders from arrested accounts, did not allow payments of salaries and taxes in order to bring down the cooperative, mislead shareholders and stimulate them to filing fraud claims against the cooperative. In addition, the investigation is blocking payments to shareholders who won a lawsuit to return the cooperative’s funds – to demonstrate that the only way for a shareholder to receive their funds is to file a fraud case.

That is, the investigation team actually commits an imitation of embezzlement of funds, in which the cooperative is trying to accuse. However, the vast majority of shareholders of the cooperative, thanks to their confidence in the council of the cooperative elected by themselves and obtaining reliable information about the sufficiency of funds in the accounts of the cooperative in order to pay off all possible obligations, make demands on the investigation team, and not on the cooperative.

Forgery of financial claims

In order to justify the seizure of the cooperative’s assets, the head of the investigation team issued a document – a resolution on the involvement of the cooperative as a civil defendant for 16 billion rubles. At the same time, he refused to provide both lawyers and the court with data on civil plaintiffs and on their claims as lawyers – which directly violated the law.
Since the indictment is talking about 232 million, not 16 billion, it is obvious that there are no plaintiffs for 16 billion – if there are any plaintiffs at all.
There is a direct forgery.

Assignment of the functions of the court

The investigation continues to go to courts, as well as to tell the media about the damage of about 16 billion rubles, despite the fact that they accuse only 232 million rubles of embezzlement.

The figure is taken from the conclusion of the expert of the North-Western RCSE of the Ministry of Justice of Russia No. 2201 / 10-1 dated December 26, 2022, according to which the total amount of funds received on the settlement accounts of PC Best Way amounted to 16,187,784,631.94 rubles – but the expert writes that 81% were written off for the purchase of real estate, and 19% went to services for the cooperative, payment of taxes, wages, that is, in fact, confirms the money was spent in full accordance with the statutory goals of the cooperative.

The investigation is engaged in frank manipulations: it claims that since the Best Way cooperative has been operating illegally from the first day, according to the investigation, all funds attracted to the cooperative are damage.

The investigation usurps the function of the court, because there is not a single judicial act on the illegality of the cooperative’s activities, all versions of the cooperative’s charter were registered with the tax office, not a single cooperative transaction was challenged in the courts.

Further, the investigation claims that 19% indicated by the expert (more than 2 billion) were spent inappropriately – transferred under fake contracts to affiliated structures: again, without any evidence whatsoever.

That is, neither almost 16 billion nor 2 billion is not theft, that is, a gratuitous seizure, but some “damage” invented by the investigation itself.

Usurpation of the will of citizens

Even more fantastic figures are used in the documents of the investigation – all legal entities mentioned in the criminal case (Hermes, Life-of-Good, Best Way cooperative and others) allegedly inflicted a total damage of 216 billion rubles, allegedly abducted (precisely abducted – that is, the investigation contradicts itself!) funds of at least 362,929 individuals. The investigative group usurps their will and declares on their behalf that they are victims of theft, although this was announced after almost two years of persuasion – and we still need to figure out if only 198 people are legal: the rest of the investigators do not have such a right hzikhidtidekrt gave.

Investigation team A.N. Vinokurova is trying with absurd figures to give the appearance of the significance of the criminal case and put pressure on the courts and the federal leadership of law enforcement agencies, trying to destroy the Best Way cooperative and illegally prosecute innocent people. It is she, together with the customers of the criminal case, who is the true organized criminal group.