Viktor Trukhin appointed a capital transfer
While they were looking for the director of the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums in two capitals, Victor Trukhin got used to being under arrest. His disappearance revealed personnel changes and a new criminal case within the walls of the institute, which is developing drugs for coronavirus, hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases.
Victor TrukhinInformation about the arrest of 59-year-old Viktor Trukhin on September 9 was reported by the United Press Service of the Courts of St. Petersburg. He was brought into custody the day before with a request for detention, and no longer as the director of the research institute.
He vacated the post, which he held for more than ten years, earlier this week. In his farewell letter he clarified: from September 5 and involuntarily. Trukhin’s daughter Sophia told, that at the same time the father stopped communicating. The next day she contacted the police, but it was unclear where exactly the top manager disappeared – in Moscow or St. Petersburg. By the evening of September 7, the Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums seemed so tired of listening to questions about the director that they only sighed when Fontanka called.
According to the editors, a criminal case of embezzlement was opened by the police on September 7 against an unidentified person. The plot is as follows: someone from the management of the research institute, no later than January 2021, transferred the entrusted budget money to Biotechnology Mechnikov, registered in Nicaragua. Translated into rubles we are talking about 436 million.
Mechnikov is a subsidiary of SPbNIIVS. It is the institute’s second manufacturing site and the only biotechnology facility in Central America that formulates, fills and packages injectable drugs. The project was implemented in 2016–2019, the creation of production was supervised by Trukhin.
Just in 2021 congratulated with his recent appointment as Honorary Consul of the Republic of Nicaragua in St. Petersburg.
According to the police investigation, in addition to helping the state with the production and supply of vaccines, Trukhin was also involved in unauthorized financial injections. In fact, he was detained by FSB officers for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region on September 8.
Suspicions against him are based, among other things, on the testimony of several witnesses.
The ex-director is actively cooperating – this was indicated by the lawyer, who, together with his client, asked for a more lenient measure of restraint. The investigator insisted that it was unsafe to remain under house arrest at this stage of the investigation, when all possible accomplices had not been identified.
The Smolninsky court placed Trukhin in custody until November 7.
Coincidentally, on the day of his arrest, another case of corruption among employees of the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums of the FMBA came to court. Charged with receiving a particularly large bribe Andrey Vasiliev, former deputy of Viktor Trukhin for economics and finance. He is believed to have assisted businessmen who wanted to win the purchase of the hatching chicken eggs needed for the production of a flu vaccine. Gratitude exceeded 36 million rubles. Former deputy in custody.
Among the heads of organizations subordinate to the FMBA, Trukhin declared the largest income for 2019 – 18.8 million rubles.
Laying hens were taken to Viktor Trukhin’s scam
The Cheka-OGPU tells how chickens are involved in today’s arrest of the ex-director of the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums of the FMBA of the Russian Federation Viktor Trukhin. As it turned out, he has real estate in Nicaragua and accounts there for large sums.
It all started in 2019, when chickens at the Sinyavinskaya poultry farm in the Leningrad region suddenly and for no reason stopped laying eggs. When egg production dropped by almost half, the main owner of the factory sent a commission there to find out the reasons.
Arriving inspectors were surprised to find a building on the factory premises emitting a powerful roar of industrial ventilation.
It was this noise that apparently frightened the birds and affected egg production, and in the building itself there was a giant crypto-farm illegally connected to Lenenergo’s networks. While a statement was submitted to the police, the criminals managed to remove the equipment, but the whole situation raised serious questions for the director of the poultry farm, Artur Holdoenko – the economic police suspected him of a number of crimes related to the finances of the enterprise, the environment, illegal leasing of space, and so on. He held out for a long time, but under the prospect of a real prison sentence, he nevertheless began to cooperate with the investigation. As a result, he left his chair only this year, having escaped with only a suspended sentence under Article 204 of the Criminal Code “Commercial Bribery”.
But Holdoenko’s testimony opened the way for new criminal cases. At the end of 2022, security forces raided the Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums of the FMBA of the Russian Federation, where Sinyavinskaya, through an intermediary company, supplied millions of eggs necessary for the production of vaccines. For receiving a bribe of 30 million rubles. Deputy Director of the Research Institute for Finance Andrei Vasiliev was detained.
From him, the attention of the security forces jumped to the now former director Viktor Trukhin. It turned out that he made an improper payment to the Latin American Institute of Biotechnology for almost 6 million dollars (almost 437 million rubles at that time). This is a joint Russian-Nicaraguan venture, 66% of which is owned by the Russian Federation. It also became known that Trukhin had already received Nicaraguan citizenship. As a result, on September 7 of this year, a criminal case was opened, and on September 8, Trukhin was detained at the border with Belarus. It’s no secret that from there he was going to head specifically to Nicaragua, where he already had decent housing and solid bank accounts. And if it weren’t for the unfortunate Sinyavinsk hens, stunned by the roar of the crypto-farm fans, all these gigantic corruption schemes at the largest state-owned enterprise developing vaccines against influenza and covid would have continued in full force even now!
