The defense of Oleg Kruchinin, a former employee of Rosprirodnadzor accused of taking bribes, interrogated several employees of the Nizhny Novgorod FSB. Two of them, according to the prisoner, were traveling with him in the same compartment to Samara, after which, unexpectedly for him, marked banknotes were found in the down jacket of the detained official. The operatives reported that they did not know Oleg Kruchinin, they did not remember him, and they did not detain him. The third witness from the FSB could not remember how he organized the transfer of marked banknotes to the official, which his colleagues later discovered during the arrest.
Mikhail Loskutov and Andrei Perepelkin, Nizhny Novgorod FSB operatives, were interrogated in court as witnesses in the criminal case of Oleg Kruchinin. The former head of the departments of Rosprirodnadzor in the Nizhny Novgorod and Samara regions is accused of taking bribes in excess of 11 million rubles. According to investigators, Andrey Chernyshev, the former director of the Center for Laboratory Analysis and Technical Measurements in the Volga Federal District (TsLATI, controlled by Rosprirodnadzor), was collecting money for the accused, whom Kruchinin helped to get this job.
Through Chernyshev, the leaders of the Mordovian, Orenburg, Ulyanovsk and Penza branches of TsLATI were dropped for the needs of the “higher leadership.”
The ex-official, who was detained at the Samara railway station in November 2021, does not admit guilt. He said that on the train from Nizhny Novgorod to Samara, two men were traveling with him in the same compartment.
According to the accused, while still on the train, he recognized FSB officers as fellow travelers. At the station, together with investigators, they took part in his detention. After the law enforcement officers asked the official to turn out his pockets, he found 80 thousand rubles in them. labeled banknotes. The defendant claimed that he did not have cash at that time and he did not know how the money got into his jacket pocket.
At the same time, the defendant noted that the jacket was left unattended when he left the compartment, and suggested that the money was planted on him.
The FSB officers did not deny that they were on the train. They said that they were going to Samara on “a task that constitutes a state secret.” The security forces said that they did not remember who was in the compartment with them, and that they did not know Oleg Kruchinin. According to the security officers, they did not directly participate in the detention of the official at the station, but they returned to Nizhny Novgorod with colleagues who “had their own task” in Samara. When asked by the lawyer whether Oleg Kruchinin was on the same bus, Andrei Perepelkin explained that he had seen “a man in the cabin, but he was of little interest to him.”
FSB officer Alexander Fedoseev, who controlled the bodies of Rosprirodnadzor from the side of his department, immediately recognized his former “ward”. However, the Chekist could not remember whether he took part in the interview with Andrei Chernyshev when he was appointed to a leadership position and whether Oleg Kruchinin asked for him. Alexander Fedoseev also drew up an act on marked banknotes, which Anton Lyubakov, director of the NTN company, took from the bank for subsequent transfer to Kruchinin. These banknotes were allegedly found in the official’s jacket pocket. Earlier, the businessman said that he wanted to establish “closer relations” with Kruchinin and transferred money to him through lawyer Rafail Guliyev.
Alexander Fedoseev could not tell who exactly authorized the marking of banknotes and their transfer to Kruchinin, whether there was a corresponding resolution. “I don’t remember. I think that all the necessary documents were transferred to the UK, ”the security officer explained.
Defender Mikhail Garanin did not find any documents in the criminal case on the conduct of operational measures with the transfer of marked banknotes to Oleg Kruchinin. He also unsuccessfully tried to find out from the witnesses where the banknote with a stamp appeared in the material evidence, which was not described and not taken into account in the case file. The lawyer also noted that some of the stamped banknotes described during the seizure at the station and taken into account in the protocol from the material evidence disappeared.
The defense intends to ask the court to interrogate the investigator of the Investigative Committee, who took part in the detention of Kruchinin and further investigative actions.
Also, at the request of the lawyer, the court sent a request to the office of the plenipotentiary for the Volga Federal District in order to find out how the interview procedure goes when applying for a job in the TsLATI leadership and whether Oleg Kruchinin could influence the personnel coordination in the presidential administration. According to the defense, the investigation did not disclose this aspect.
At the end of the meeting, the preventive measure was again extended to the former manager of the regional Rosprirodnazor. The accused asked to be released under house arrest, but he was kept in custody until 21 August.