Sergey Kryukov from Nizhegorodets JSC was sentenced to six years of probation for giving a bribe on an especially large scale. As the court established, in 2019-2020 his company was a contractor for landscaping JSC Nizhny Novgorod Vodokanal and transferred 11 million rubles to the customer’s management. kickbacks from contracts. Sergey Kryukov fully admitted his guilt and testified on the facts of giving bribes. His defense asked to release the entrepreneur from the fine, citing that Nizhegorodets worked under the contracts in good faith, and all the conditions for receiving kickbacks were dictated by the leaders of the water utility. However, the court fined the businessman twice the amount of the bribe: 22 million rubles. according to the verdict, it is necessary to pay the convict, whose property was seized.
The Nizhny Novgorod District Court in a special order considered the criminal case of the adviser to the general director of Nizhegorodets JSC Sergey Kryukov. According to investigators, he was the actual head of the company and in 2018–2020 ensured the transfer of more than 11 million rubles from its settlement accounts. management of Nizhny Novgorod Vodokanal JSC in the form of bribes. As follows from the indictment, first Sergey Kryukov met in a cafe with the general director of the water utility Nikolai Nikolyuk and his first deputy Alexander Sidlyarevich, where he was offered to work as a general contractor, giving kickbacks. Sergey Kryukov agreed to pay from the amount of work performed. Nizhegorodets entered into agreements with the water utility and was engaged in landscaping after excavations and repairs of networks – restoring the pavement of roads and sidewalks.
Receiving payment from the customer for the work performed, the contractor transferred part of the money to the accounts of various organizations – LLC Betonstroyservis, Krona, Aqua Service, as well as charitable foundations Joy and Consolation and the Society of Friends of the Vatoped Monastery on Mount Athos “.
Through these companies and funds, as the investigation believes, kickbacks from the contractors of Nizhny Novgorod Vodokanal JSC passed to its management and organizers of the corrupt criminal community (OPS) created in Moscow.
In the Kanavinsky District Court, on charges of receiving more than 40 million rubles. of bribes, the alleged creator of Oleg Lobanov is on trial (the second suspected organizer, Ilya Ryzhiy, is on the wanted list). Together with him in the OPS case are the former heads of the water utility Nikolai Nikolyuk and Alexander Sidlyarevich (according to the state prosecution, they were part of the Nizhny Novgorod structural unit of the criminal group), and Artem Vasilenko as an intermediary in collecting bribes.
All of them do not admit guilt in receiving kickbacks, and the former director of the water utility also denied the fact of acquaintance with a representative of Nizhegorodets JSC.
Sergey Kryukov, on the contrary, fully admitted his guilt in giving bribes, having entered into a judicial agreement with the prosecutor, and testified in the Kanavinsky court in the case of OPS Vodokanal. According to him, the former contractor was interrogated as one of the main witnesses for the prosecution.
Therefore, the prosecutor’s office considered that the merchant had fully complied with the conditions and requested a suspended sentence for him with a fine in the form of three times the amount of the bribe of 33 million rubles. The defense asked to completely release Sergei Kryukov from paying the fine, citing that it would be very difficult for him to support three children. “The bribe scheme was built in such a way that without the transfer of the required kickbacks, JSC Nizhegorodets simply would not have become the winner according to the results of the competitions held and would not have been allowed to work in the future. A condition was set before Kryukov: either pay and work, or no contracts. At the same time, Nizhegorodets spent the payment received under the contracts on production activities, payroll to employees. The money from the water utility was spent on the performance of the work, only after that the amount of the bribe to the officials of the water utility was formed. For himself personally, Kryukov did not receive anything from these “corruption ties”, therefore, in such circumstances, the threefold amount of the fine is clearly unfair,” lawyer Alexei Safonov said in the debate.
“Given that no one was hurt by my actions, I ask you not to impose a fine that is too heavy for me,” added the accused Kryukov.
As a result, Judge Konstantin Ivanov sentenced the former contractor to six years of suspended imprisonment with the same probationary period, but reduced the fine to twice the amount of the bribe, appointing 22 million rubles. The convicted entrepreneur must pay it within two months after the conviction comes into force, otherwise the recovery will be levied on all his arrested property – an apartment, cars and accounts. Sergei Kryukov has not yet decided whether he will appeal against the verdict in part of the punishment.
In a conversation with Kommersant-Privolzhye, he complained that Nizhegorodets was one of the best contractors for the water utility, but after the initiation of a criminal case, the customer abandoned the contracts and did not pay for the general contracting companies.
