Bashkir lawyers, who openly declared corruption in the investigating authorities, instead of the check promised by Alexander Bastrykin, were charged from Moscow with publishing intimate correspondence between a witness in a criminal case and the investigator who led the case.
At the same time, the statement of the defendant about coercion into an intimate relationship for assistance in obtaining the status of a victim was ignored, and the ICR officer himself, first, under a signature on a false denunciation, disowned his involvement in unambiguous messages, and then admitted his authorship, stating that everything was by mutual feeling that arose during the interrogation.
At the end of January, the prosecutor’s office of the Republic of Bashkortostan received materials from an unusual case from the regional Investigative Committee of the ICR. The applicant was an employee of the investigative department, Stanislav Mikhailov, and among the defendants were two lawyers known for their statements about the corruption of law enforcement agencies. However, this time it was not about corruption, but about the violation of the privacy of the investigator. The defendants do not admit guilt and consider the criminal prosecution to be revenge for the press conference, which was noticed by the chairman of the TFR. One of the defendants, lawyer Vitaly Burkin, spoke about the background of the criminal case, inconsistencies in the position of the prosecution and attempts to whitewash the PASMI law enforcement officer who had compromised himself.
Report for Alexander Ivanovich
On October 29 last year, the chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, instructed the Main Investigation Department of the TFR of Russia to conduct an audit in the law enforcement agencies of the Republic of Bashkiria in connection with an open appeal published in the media. The GSU was instructed to study and carefully check the arguments of the applicants. “Alexander Ivanovich Bastrykin instructed to submit a report based on the results,” the official website of the TFR reported.
This open appeal meant a press conference held two days earlier by lawyer Vitaly Burkin and lawyer Alexander Voitsekh. It touched upon the topic of corruption manifestations in the work of the Investigative Department of the ICR for the Republic of Bashkortostan, in particular, the second department for the investigation of particularly important cases. Lawyers drew attention to the large number of acquittals in cases against high-ranking officials that this department investigated.
Burkin and Wojciech gave many examples of the removal of VIPs from responsibility, in particular, the story of embezzlement of funds in the Bar Association of the region, which PASMI wrote about earlier. The criminal case of fraud with multi-million dollar damages against the ex-head of the chamber, and now the deputy of the State Assembly of Bashkiria from United Russia, Bulat Yumadilov, was dismissed for lack of corpus delicti in April last year.
Another, even more high-profile case of fraud, employees of the second department investigated for 10 years. We are talking about the events of 2007-2010, when a group with the participation of the chairman of the Iglinsky district court Farit Nasretdinov and officials of the district administration, by forging judicial acts, seized municipal lands and resold them to private individuals, causing hundreds of millions of rubles in damage. The chairman of the court, Nasretdinov, died last year, and before his death he was released from criminal liability due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, and the damage to the budget of the republic was not compensated.
Another potential person involved in the corruption case, Midkhat Gainetdinov, the former vice-president of the Bar Association of the Republic, the husband of the judge of the Sovetsky District Court of Ufa, Albina Gainetdinova, did not live to be held accountable. In June 2020, lawyer Gulshat Faizerakhmanova, accused of fraud, pointed to him as an intermediary in the transfer of a bribe. As part of a pre-trial agreement with the regional prosecutor, she voluntarily reported ten episodes of bribery to prosecutors and judges through Gainetdinov. Gainetdinov died in January 2022, and for a year and a half, investigators did not bother to clarify his role in the crime. The federal judge, the wife of Gainutdinov, also escaped responsibility. The only result of assistance to the investigation on the part of Faizerakhmanova was the red-handed detention of her son Ilnur. He testified that he was not going to transfer these funds to his mother and was sentenced to a suspended sentence.
It is difficult to say whether Alexander Ivanovich received the requested report on the situation in the investigative bodies of Bashkiria, but, as Vitaly Burkin himself told PASMI, there is still nothing about the arrival of inspectors from Moscow and the results of their work to identify a possible corruption component in the red tape and inaction of investigators. not known.
Unromantic Stas Mikhailov
But the reaction of the republican law enforcement officers to the revelations of corruption turned out to be lightning fast. On November 2, 2021, five days after the press conference, its organizers Vitaliy Burkin and Oleksandr Voitsekh became defendants in a criminal case on violation of privacy. It was about the intimate correspondence of the senior investigator of the second department of the Investigative Committee of the ICR of Bashkortostan, Stanislav Mikhailov. It was he who led the case of lawyer Faizerakhmanova, which is described above, and made indecent proposals in instant messengers to Oksana Permyakova, a witness in this case.
However, the procedural and non-procedural relations of the investigator and the figurant have their own background. With a statement about the crime, Oksana Permyakova turned to the head of the third department of the republican investigative department of the TFR, Yevgeny Babich, back in January 2021.
The woman indicated that she “was subjected to harassment and harassment” by Mikhailov. At the same time, in exchange for an intimate relationship, the investigator allegedly promised her patronage in obtaining the status of a victim and the return of money lost as a result of the crime. According to Permyakova, Mikhailov sent her very candid photos and asked her to do the same in return. At the same time, the applicant indicates that the investigator deleted all correspondence after reading it, and she herself saved screenshots of messages that she is ready to provide as evidence of her words.
Permyakova also set out the details of the sexual harassment in audio recordings that she sent to her friends. So, in particular, she said that the intimate photos sent to her were allegedly taken in the investigator’s office, and his sexual preferences, apparently, do not fit into the generally accepted framework.
From an audio recording by O. Permyakova:
“He kind of says to me: I told my wife about you … That you are so good that I want to date you … And she also wanted you. I’m fucking… in shock, I can’t even tell how shocked I am…”
According to Vitaly Burkin, investigator of the third department Roman Ishbulatov seized the applicant’s telephone with correspondence and audio files, but no verification of the facts reported by her was carried out and no procedural decisions were taken.
But at the request of Stanislav Mikhailov himself, a criminal case of libel was initiated in the name of the head of the regional investigation department of the ICR, Denis Chernyatyev.
Investigator Mikhailov saw signs of a crime in the publication on the Telegram channel “Case from Kurai – Kushtau” of information that he entered into an intimate correspondence with a person with the status of a witness in a criminal case and put this person in a dependent position. In a statement, Stanislav Mikhailov calls this information “knowingly false” and “slanderous” and suggests that the purpose of their publication may be to remove him from the investigation of criminal cases.
Love at first interrogation
However, in July the concept of investigator Mikhailov changed dramatically, and he declared not about slander, but about a violation of private life. And in early November, as already mentioned, his statement that became the reason for the criminal prosecution of Burkin and Wojciech.
At the same time, the libel case was not terminated, although, as Vitaly Burkin emphasized, these are mutually exclusive compositions. “If we are talking about a violation of privacy, it is understood that Mikhailov admits his participation in intimate correspondence, but then it turns out that the libel statement was a false denunciation, for which, by the way, he signed,” the source of PASMI explained.
A new version of the origin of ambiguous messages in the messenger is indicated in the decision to bring Burkin as a defendant.
It turns out that Mikhailov and Permyakova began to correspond “on various topics, including those of an intimate nature” “in connection with the mutual personal sympathy” that arose after their interrogation. And Permyakova herself shared screenshots of this correspondence with the accused Faizerakhmanova “due to the established trusting relationship.” “At the same time, consent to the dissemination of information received from her to third parties Permyakova O.L. and Mikhailov S.S. did not give, ”the document says.
But the latter, wanting to discredit the investigator in charge of her case, allegedly entered into a criminal conspiracy with other defendants. She handed over six screenshots of the lawyer Alexander Voitsekh, who was providing her legal assistance, with the aim of publishing them, and he turned to the lawyer Burkin, with whom he maintained friendly relations. The latter allegedly handed over a critical article discrediting the investigator to Eduard Mamashev, the author of the “Case for Kurai” channel, who was unaware of the criminal intentions of the group.
Dictation testimony
Vitaly Burkin himself categorically disagrees with the accusations. He considers the criminal prosecution to be revenge for the press conference, and also sees it as an attempt to divert investigator Mikhailov from responsibility. With a request to check on the facts of possible abuses by investigators and heads of the Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee of Russia in the Republic of Bashkortostan and to initiate criminal cases, he soon after the presentation of charges turned to the chairman of the ICR Alexander Bastrykin, but in response he received only a formal reply.
In a conversation with PASMI, the lawyer stressed that all the accusations against him are based solely on the testimony of Mamashev. At the same time, these testimonies were repeatedly changed during the preliminary investigation, which is reflected in the case file. So, on June 23, 2021, he stated that he had received a draft article and screenshots of the correspondence from Burkin, and two days later that he had prepared the text of the publication on his own and did not agree with Burkin. And on June 26, the author of the channel radically changed his testimony, saying that he received the screenshots from another person, and wrote the text based on the theses sent by Burkin.
“Such a change in testimony can only be explained by the fact that in the period from June 25 to July 26, 2021, the investigator became convinced that it was not me who sent the screenshots to Mamashev. Thus, Mamashev’s testimony changed depending on the situation, for the sake of the illegal interests of the investigating authority, ”the lawyer noted.
Vitaly Burkin also emphasized that in principle there is no corpus delicti in the actions that he and other defendants are charged with. First, according to Art. 137 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the right to privacy does not apply to information related to official activities and of an unlawful nature. And secondly, the dissemination of any information under the law cannot entail criminal liability if they were previously made public by another person, despite the fact that it is reliably known that Permyakova passed on information about the correspondence with investigator Mikhailov to at least one person – her friend Faiserakhmanova.
The lawyer presented his arguments in a complaint addressed to the Prosecutor of the Republic of Bashkortostan Igor Pantyushin and the head of the Republican Investigative Committee of the ICR Denis Chernyatyev. It was sent on January 24, Burkin has not yet received a response. Meanwhile, the preliminary investigation of his case was completed – on January 28, 2022, the materials with the indictment were sent to the prosecutor’s office of the republic.