“Shumakov and partner” investors of the pyramid demand to put them in longer
The people who lost their money got their case reviewed.
As it became known to Kommersant, the Moscow City Court overturned the verdict of the Chertanovsky District Court in the case of the creators of the financial pyramid Denis Shumakov and Georgy Gants. It was appealed by both the prosecutor’s office and several dozen victims, who in total lost more than 290 million rubles. It should be noted that it was the representative of the supervisory authority during the debate who insisted on reclassifying the actions of the accused from fraud to a much less serious organization of illegal activities to raise funds. Thanks to this, instead of the ten years that threatened them, the defendants received two years and eight months each, which, at the time of the verdict, had already practically spent time in a pre-trial detention center.
The first appeal against the verdict handed down on November 25, 2022 by the Chertanovsky District Court of the capital to the co-founders of Shumakov and Partners LLC Denis Shumakov and Georgy Gants was filed five days after the announcement of the court decision. The prosecutor’s office filed an appeal the next day. Then the verdict was appealed by several dozen more victims (there are more than a hundred of them in the case).
According to Kommersant’s information, in the Moscow City Court the prosecutor’s office insisted on annulment of the sentence, referring only to the term of punishment that did not suit her: instead of the three and a half years requested for each of the defendants, they received two years and eight months in prison. The victims, however, believed that such a mild punishment for the creators of the financial pyramid turned out to be possible solely due to the fact that the representative of the supervisory authority, who throughout the process did not express doubts that the defendants had committed particularly large-scale fraud (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, up to ten years in prison), already during the debate, he unexpectedly asked to reclassify their act to a much less serious art. 172.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (organization of activities to attract funds from individuals, in which the payment of income is carried out at the expense of attracted funds from individuals in the absence of investment or other legal business activities).
The victims themselves believe that they were the victims of fraud. For example, as one of them claimed, the Latvian company, to whose account his money was deposited, does not appear at the indicated address and hardly exists at all: its seal turned out to be fake.
Having considered the complaints and the prosecutor’s submission, the appellate instance came to the conclusion that in passing the verdict, the Chertanovsky District Court violated the norms of not only criminal procedural (CPC RF), but also criminal (Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) legislation. The latter, apparently, concerns just the unjustified reclassification of the fraud initially imputed to the defendants Gantz and Shumakov.
As a result, the Moscow City Court overturned the verdict, sending the case for a new trial to the same Chertanovsky court. It should be noted that if the decision of the court of first instance entered into force, the defendants should have been released from custody as early as December 2022, since, taking into account the recalculation of the terms according to the formula “a day in a pre-trial detention center – a day and a half in a colony”, the punishment assigned to them by this time they would have left already.
As Kommersant already said, Shumakov and Partners LLC, which rented an office in the Empire tower in Moscow City, launched its active work in the spring of 2017. Having at their disposal the client bases of various organizations, including several large Russian banks, managers began methodically calling potential investors. They offered them to invest the available money in “carrying out trading operations in the US stock and derivatives markets”, promising a profit of 18% per annum in foreign currency. At the same time, LLC did not have a corresponding license from the Central Bank, and its leaders assured depositors that they simply did not need it, since their activities take place not in Russia, but in the US economic space.
However, the investigators also failed to find the necessary agreement with the American brokerage company from Mr. Shumakov and Gantz.
After clients deposited money, trust management agreements were concluded with them. To show that the investment was working, investors were shown false electronic reports of allegedly successful trading transactions, such as buying and selling securities.
However, in the end, the majority of those who entrusted their money to Shumakov and Partners LLC not only did not receive the promised interest in foreign currency, but even could not return their money. Those appearing in the case as victims of the activity of this financial pyramid contributed from $20,000 to $800,000 there. The total amount of damage caused to the clients of this LLC, as follows from the verdict of the Chertanovsky District Court of the capital, amounted to more than 291 million rubles.
