Eight years in a strict regime colony will be spent by the former head of the anti-corruption service in the North-Western Customs Department Maxim Rozsypalo. On July 3, the Zyuzinsky Court of Moscow found him guilty of taking bribes in the amount of more than 1 million rubles. According to investigators, for this money, Rozsypalo regularly ensured the unhindered passage of the border by cargo trucks of a businessman involved in imports.
Express checkout
The Zyuzinsky Court of Moscow has sentenced Maxim Rozsypalo, ex-head of the Anti-Corruption Service at the North-Western Customs Administration, to eight years in a strict regime colony in the case of a large bribe. He held the post of fighter against corruption for a little over a year.
According to the investigation, Rozsypalo provided general patronage to a businessman who was engaged in imports. For a fee, he promised not to conduct additional checks during the customs clearance of his goods.
The official was caught red-handed in August 2021 – in one of the St. Petersburg cafes, he accepted another “fee” from an intermediary. On the operational video, you can see how the head of customs puts a tightly sealed envelope with marked bills into his bag. Immediately after that, he was detained by law enforcement officers. The wife of the detained customs officer then stated “Izvestiya” that her husband was “set up” and that he was “just a foreign body in such a burnt-out system.”
According to the investigation, the representative of the St. Petersburg customs provided his services through an intermediary, and he did it systematically. He had a certain price list: Maxim Rozsypalo took $700 for the “express clearance” of one truck. In total, he received more than 1 million rubles from the entrepreneur for the gray transit of 20 cars across the border, as well as for general patronage, said Anastasia Glushchenko, senior assistant to the head of the Western Interregional Investigation Department for Transport of the Investigative Committee.
“Kommersant”, 07/04/2023, “Veteran of the SVR did not pass customs”: According to Kommersant’s sources, then more than $9,000 was handed over to the customs officer under the control of operatives. The money was previously marked with a special solution, its traces were found immediately after the arrest on the palms of Mr. Rozsypalo. […] As it turned out during the investigation, Mr. Rozsypalo moved to the customs after many years of service in the Foreign Intelligence Service. At his former place of service, he was repeatedly awarded, was positively characterized, and also had the status of a veteran of the Foreign Intelligence Service. However, an excellent reputation did not prevent Mr. Rozsypalo, already in the customs authorities, as they say in the materials of the criminal case, from creating a corruption scheme in May 2021. […] Maxim Rozsypalo himself did not admit guilt either during the investigation or during the process. His defense plans to appeal the verdict. — Inset K.ru
Quiet activity
Little is known about the career of the convicted customs officer. Prior to joining the FCS, he worked for the Ministry of Economic Development and private companies. During the work of Maxim Rozsypalo, the structure headed by him was not noted for high-profile results, but rather the opposite, said a source of Izvestia familiar with the course of the investigation.
In February 2021, just during the work of Rozsypalo, the court of the Leningrad Region arrested a gang that traded in secret customs data. During a search of one of the inspectors, investigators found packs of dollars and euros. The former head of the St. Petersburg customs department, Oleg Gusev, also got burned on a bribe during this period. He demanded a reward of 20 million rubles from the merchants. These are just some of the examples of corruption that Rozsypalo “didn’t notice,” the source said.
Rozsypalo was considered a confidant of the head of the Anti-Corruption Department of the Federal Customs Service of Russia Dmitry Muryshov, who was detained a year later – and also for a bribe, the Izvestia source noted. According to our interlocutor, it was Rozsypalo who testified about Muryshov’s participation in the criminal scheme.
The court considered the evidence collected by the investigators in relation to Rozsypalo sufficient to pass a sentence and found him guilty of taking a bribe (part 6 of article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The property of the former customs officer was arrested, he will also have to pay a fine in the amount of three times the amount of the bribe. The court deprived him of the right to hold public office for five years.
Wine outside
On the Internet today, you can easily find services related to the export of goods abroad and, conversely, the delivery of goods in a simplified manner, Aleksey Dondupai, president of the board of the Center for Anti-Corruption Expertise and Anti-Corruption Assistance, told Izvestia.
At the same time, there are a lot of corruption temptations when working at customs, he noted: problems with documents, questions about the quality and transportation of goods. The cargo can stand at customs for several days and during this time lose its presentation, if we are talking about perishable goods, such as flowers.
“To avoid losses, businessmen are ready to do anything to speed up the process of passing the goods check,” the expert explained.
Trucks belonging to companies that have recently appeared on the market are subjected to maximum inspection, customs clearance expert Vladislav Fadeev explained to Izvestia. In particular, we are talking about those who started transporting goods a month or two ago.
“If a company has already established itself as a conscientious one, then its cars are fully inspected only occasionally – the random number method works,” he said. “A full inspection of every truck crossing the border with our volume of cargo transportation cannot be done physically.
At the same time, according to him, in the temporary storage area, where the inspection takes place with the unloading of goods, there are surveillance cameras that record every action of customs officers. During a full inspection, a protocol is drawn up, photographs are attached to it, which illustrate all stages of the process – how the car is opened, how each pallet of goods is taken out, what an empty car looks like, and so on.
– Rozsypalo could give the command to photograph some small amount of goods – especially if it is identical in each pallet. Accordingly, they could unload one or two pallets and show that they had completely unloaded, the expert suggested.
Since the cargo of the entrepreneur, whom Rozsypalo took care of, was most likely only partially unloaded, something prohibited could well have been carried in the rest of the goods. Some carriers, Vladislav Fadeev noted, do just that: in fact, they carry one product, but according to the documents they issue it for another.
They do it to reduce customs duties. In fact, the goods that are in the truck and its virtual “double” can be almost identical, but the amount of duty they will have is radically different. Outside, it can be wine or socks, but inside, in the middle, anything,” the expert clarified.
@vchkogpu, 18.08.2021 06:31: Rozsypalo demanded $700 from the businessman for unhindered customs clearance of one car. […] The source described how the customs work, when such money is paid from each car and, in fact, what it is paid for and how it is distributed. Anyone who pays $700 for a car knows why. What “service” he buys for this money and he also knows how this amount is further distributed among officials. A car is either a collection or a “changeling”, when one thing is declared in the declaration, but something expensive and sometimes even prohibited for import enters. In this amount, there is no payment on the spot at the customs post, there is no payment for the unhindered passage of the border. Let’s take a look at what’s in that $700.
The amount of USD 700 includes the loyalty of the Risk Management Department at the customs office where the car with the load is going. That is, the inspection will not “shoot” there and no one will come to the cargo. This includes the “temporary blindness” of the North-Western Operational Customs and the entire law enforcement unit of the customs clearance office – this is the Operational Investigative Department and the Department of Inquiry, the Department of Administrative Investigations. There is also a customs value control system, since the goods, as it enters the territory of the Russian Federation, go according to the lowest possible customs value index. Separately, the non-interference of the transport police and other bodies, who know everything, but are silent, should be paid from above. The scheme of work was told by one of the former deputies by right of one of the customs offices of the NWTU, who is familiar with the service in the customs authorities and has a wonderful house, and not alone, and not only in Russia. It is easy to understand the scale of customs shadow income. — Inset K.ru
In recent years, criminal cases against high-ranking and ordinary employees of the customs service go one after another, reminded Mansur Yusupov, chairman of the board of the National Committee for Public Control. Part of the reason for this state of affairs is that there are too many customs officers and it is difficult to control them, he said. In his opinion, the department should introduce such a practice as a monthly polygraph.