While blogger Valeria Chekalina (Lerchek) is paying her tax debts and waiting for the ban on certain actions to be lifted, Elena Blinovskaya, a defendant in another tax case, is trying to cancel house arrest and raise money for lawyers. On May 22, the Moscow City Court did not soften her preventive measure.
The author of the “Marathon of Desires” Elena Blinsovskaya did not come to the meeting in the appeal. She sent a letter to the court, in which she asked to consider the complaint against the decision of the Presnensky Court of the capital of April 28 in her absence. Then the court, at the request of the Moscow Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia, sent her under house arrest until June 26 in the Millennium Park cottage village near Moscow. She was banned from using the Internet and means of communication, except in emergency cases.
The author of the appeal, lawyer Natalia Salnikova, did not come to the Moscow City Court either. She, as judge Inna Tardzhumanyan said, is now on sick leave. Also, there was no investigator at the trial, at the request of which the district court chose a measure of restraint for the figurant. This happened on April 27, after Blinovskaya was detained in the Smolensk region while trying to cross the border with Belarus, from where, according to the investigation, she planned to move to Europe.
Therefore, Blinovskaya’s second lawyer, Nikita Morozov, had to take the hit in a higher court. He spoke after the judge read out his colleague’s complaint. Natalia Salnikova appealed to the fact that her client is the mother of four children, she did not hide from the investigation and voluntarily handed over her passport. She pointed out that Blinovskaya was charged with a crime committed in the field of entrepreneurial activity, under which it is forbidden to take businessmen into custody.
On April 27, the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia for Moscow charged Blinovskaya with tax evasion from an individual (personal income tax) on an especially large scale in the amount of more than 918 million rubles (part 2 of article 198 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), as well as money laundering in the amount more than 43 million rubles. The millionaire blogger admitted her guilt and even issued a confession, paying, according to the head of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, 10 million rubles.
Lawyer Nikita Morozov in the Moscow City Court asked to cancel the decision of the Presnensky Court of Moscow. In his complaint, he recalled the European Court of Human Rights, from whose jurisdiction Russia had already withdrawn, calling the arguments of the investigation that his client, while at large, could hide or continue to engage in criminal activity, “assumptions”. He considered the decision of the court unreasonable.
“According to the defense, the election of Blinovskaya house arrest is impossible, since my client is accused of an economic crime related to entrepreneurial activity,” the lawyer said, adding that such a preventive measure violates the rights of his client. He asked Blinovskaya to choose a preventive measure that would allow her to “continue to work and lead a normal life.”
At the same time, the lawyer assured the court that Blinovskaya never had the intention to hide from the investigation, “and what happened on April 26 is connected solely with the nature of her work.” “She did not know that a criminal case had been initiated against her, she was not called to the investigator to conduct investigative actions, so she had no intention to leave the Russian Federation,” the defender argued.
In turn, the prosecutor asked to leave the decision of the Presnensky court in force. In her opinion, by sending Blinovskaya under house arrest, the court took into account information about her personality, all the characteristics and nature of the alleged crime. At the same time, the representative of the department emphasized that the arguments of the defense, which argued them by the decision of the plenum of the Supreme Court, mainly relate to the detention of citizens, while the investigation asked for house arrest for Blinovskaya.
“I ask you to refuse to satisfy the complaint of the defense,” the prosecutor said. After weighing the arguments of the parties, the judge did just that. The defender left the court without comment.
Earlier, on May 15, the Presnensky Court of Moscow banned certain actions of Elena Blinovskaya’s husband, Alexei Blinovsky, on charges of aiding his wife in tax evasion and money laundering. His position is at odds with the position of his wife – Blinovsky denies guilt. At the same time, by court order, he can leave the house, as well as communicate with his wife. However, the defendant nevertheless appealed against it.
His wife, despite the court’s ban on using the Internet and means of communication, published a post on her Telegram channel on May 21. In it, Elena Blinovskaya lamented that the court “blocked all accounts” and left her “without the opportunity to live and fight.” Therefore, she asked her users to help her with money in order to “pay for lawyers and start paying taxes.” Blinovskaya later reported that the bank had blocked the card indicated by her assistant.
Meanwhile, on May 22, it became known that another blogger, Valeria Chekalina, known as Lerchek, paid off all her tax debts for 311 million rubles. Her lawyer, Konstantin Tretyakov, said that on May 3, his client borrowed this amount and transferred it to the tax authorities. Now the defense is waiting for a response from the investigator to their petition to cancel the measure of restraint and remove the arrests from the accounts. In early May 2023, blogger Alexandra Mitroshina paid a debt of 127 million rubles to the tax inspectorate. A criminal case was also initiated against her for tax evasion by an individual (part 2 of article 198 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). When this became known, Mitroshina was in Dubai.