The Supreme Court (SC) of Russia put an end to the protracted trial in a criminal case on the embezzlement of funds from IDGC of Center JSC. More than three years ago, five power engineers received from six to nine years in prison for embezzling more than 240 million rubles in 2008-2010. Later their punishment was reduced and they were released. The disputes of the parties continued in various courts, but the Supreme Court eventually decided that the power engineers, although they were acquitted under the article on an organized criminal community, remain guilty of embezzlement, and therefore do not have the right to rehabilitation, and the amount of damage that the victim can claim side, is not subject to any recalculation.
The final stage of the litigation that dragged on for almost seven years, concerning this criminal case, took place in the cassation instance of the Supreme Court. Deputy Prosecutor General Igor Tkachev applied here with a submission to the previous decision of the Second Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction.
He asked to cancel the previous court decision on the return of the investigation materials to the appellate court due to the fact that the amount of damage was allegedly incorrectly determined due to an “arithmetic calculation error”, and a number of evidence were also evaluated.
“The courts of first and second instances correctly established that the perpetrators committed crimes as part of an organized criminal group, as evidenced by careful preparation for embezzlement of money, the development of a scheme of criminal activity, and the involvement of knowledgeable and ignorant participants,” the deputy prosecutor general said. He also considered that the court of cassation went beyond its competence, “actually establishing the advantages of one block of evidence over others”, speaking of underestimating the arguments of the defense. Another stumbling block was the question of the rehabilitation of previously convicted persons on one of the charges, which had previously been dropped by the court.
Interestingly, the Supreme Court decided not to send Mr. Tkachev’s submission back to the Second Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction, as might be expected, but sent it to its collegium for criminal cases. As a result, as it became known to Kommersant, the decision was made in just a couple of hours, although all five convicts with lawyers and representatives of IDGC of Center as the injured party arrived at the meeting. According to the participants in the trial, Viktor Filatov, the main defendant in the criminal case, behaved emotionally and tried to quarrel with the court, insisting that he not be called a convict. “Sit down, condemned!” was the answer he received.
As a result, Igor Tkachev’s cassation appeal was fully satisfied, thus putting an end to the “case of Belgorod power engineers”.
As previously reported by Kommersant, the verdict to the former general director of the Belgorod branch of IDGC of Center Viktor Filatov, his deputy Alexei Zelensky, as well as employees of OJSC Corporate Service Systems (CorSsis) Stanislav Milkin, Pavel Tishchenko and Alexander Pivovarov was announced in the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow in July 2019. They were charged with especially large-scale embezzlement (part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) – embezzlement of IDGC funds when concluding a number of outsourcing agreements economically unprofitable for the company through affiliated companies, including those controlled by KorSsis. At the same time, the charges under Art. 210 (organized criminal community) with the possibility of rehabilitation in this part, but ordered them to reimburse 241 million rubles. damage. At the same time, the defendants received from six to nine years in prison, but due to the fact that they were under arrest before the court decision was made (a day in a pre-trial detention center is equal to one and a half days in a colony), some of them were immediately released. The rest were released a little later, when the Moscow City Court, having considered appeals, reduced the terms of punishment, and redirected the issue of damages to a civil court. It is worth noting that, having been released, the former power engineers began their employment. For example, Mr. Filatov, whose house, according to unconfirmed reports, was recently damaged by shelling from the Ukrainian side, according to some reports, took up the issue of obtaining electricity from alternative sources, in particular, from the waste of pig-breeding enterprises in the Belgorod region. At the same time, both the main person involved and his former accomplices all these years continued to insist on their complete innocence. They argued that in the case, which was initiated by the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the TFR, there is neither the composition nor the event of the crime. The case was reviewed many times in different instances, but the five defendants always demanded an acquittal.
“We will definitely complain and go to the Presidium of the Supreme Court, as we had previously reached there with the question of the illegality of prolonging Viktor Ivanovich (Filatov. – Kommersant) a measure of restraint in the form of detention,” the lawyer assured Kommersant after the meeting of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation Mr. Filatov Vladimir Gorelik. According to him, the defense was not really allowed to speak at the meeting, and the conclusions of the cassation court, which allegedly found up to 20 gross violations of the law, demanded that the guilty verdict be cancelled.
The defender connected the decision of the Supreme Court with the overly emotional performance of his client.
“This is my purely subjective opinion, but the judges may have been unpleasantly surprised by Viktor Ivanovich’s harsh statements about his protests against the lawlessness that has been going on for many years,” said Mr. Gorelik, once again emphasizing that this was only his personal assumption, adding that in the previous the court decision “concentrated all the violations of the Moscow City Court.”
In turn, Oleg Zhukov, a partner at the TM Defense legal bureau, representing the interests of IDGC, explained to Kommersant that the victims were satisfied with the outcome of the case. According to him, the courts of first and second instances issued “objective and fair decisions”, which there are no grounds to cancel. “The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation confirmed the guilt of the convicts – something that we have been talking about for more than five years in every instance of the court. Despite the fact that the defenders of the convicts clearly abused their right and dragged out the process, the end was finally put. We are fully satisfied with the decision of the Supreme Court,” said Mr. Zhukov.
At the same time, the participants in the process agreed that after they receive the reasoning part of the decision, a process will be initiated in a civil court to compensate material damage from ex-power engineers.