The Moscow City Court rejected the appeal of the Prosecutor General’s Office, which tried to confiscate 62 land plots and seven houses from the relatives of the former employee of the “banking” department of the FSB of the Russian Federation Andrei Cherkalin, who was accused of especially large-scale fraud and released from criminal liability after the statute of limitations expired.
At the same time, not only was the decision of the court of first instance, which turned only 28 plots into state revenue, remained in force, but one of the houses was returned to the defendant, a former subordinate of the Chekist billionaire Kirill Cherkalin.
The Moscow City Court on Thursday assessed the legality of the decision of the Khoroshevsky District Court, which determined the fate of the property of the Vasiliev family last December. Both the plaintiff and the defendant were dissatisfied with the decision of the court of first instance. The Prosecutor General’s Office, which prepared a long list of properties owned by relatives, believed that all of them were acquired thanks to the corrupt connections of the family representative, ex-Chekist Andrei Vasiliev, and therefore were subject to confiscation. Since the district judge Yevgeny Yablokov recognized as unconfirmed purchases only a small part of the assets of the Vasilyevs – 28 out of 90 land plots and one out of eight houses in the Moscow region – the supervisory authority in its appeal asked the Moscow City Court to review its decision. In turn, the defendant’s defense considered the conclusions of Judge Yablokov to be excessively harsh and also appealed them to the Moscow City Court, asking at least to reduce the amount of the confiscated. Thus, at the meeting, both the presentation of supervision and the complaint of the defense were considered at the same time.
It is worth noting that the Moscow City Court generally recognized the conclusions of the district judge, who limited the claims of the Prosecutor General’s Office to strict time frames, as justified. According to Yevgeny Yablokov’s conclusions, only real estate received by the family from the moment the “anti-corruption” law No. 230 was adopted on January 1, 2013, which obligated civil servants and members of their families to declare their large acquisitions, was subject to confiscation until March 19, 2014, when Andrey Vasiliev was fired from the FSB. Thus, the claim of the Prosecutor General’s Office was rejected.
But the defendant’s lawyer, Alexander Gofshtein, managed to convince the second instance that one of the residential buildings of the Vasiliev family was confiscated by accident, and return it.
The defender provided the court with documents confirming that the mansion was built by the family after the dismissal of Major Vasiliev.
As Alexander Gofshtein told Kommersant, he is quite satisfied with the result. The Prosecutor General’s Office did not promptly comment on the court decision.
Recall that the retired head of the 2nd “banking” department of department “K” of the Economic Security Service of the FSB of the Russian Federation Vasiliev was accused by the TFR of especially large-scale fraud (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), committed together with the ex-head of this department Kirill Cherkalin and retired deputy head of department “K” Dmitry Frolov. Mr. Cherkalin fully admitted his guilt, and therefore was sentenced in a special order to seven years. His assets were confiscated for 6 billion rubles.
The criminal prosecution of Major Vasiliev, taking into account the 10-year prescription of the crime incriminated to him, in December last year, the 235th garrison military court stopped on non-rehabilitating grounds. The proceedings around the defendant’s assets turned out to be much more interesting. Even at the stage of preliminary investigation, the ICR discovered those and achieved a judicial arrest of property belonging to Mr. Vasiliev and his relatives. In addition to numerous real estate, the list included a Lexus LX450D, a collection of 17 copies of predominantly gold branded watches and personal savings in the amount of about $7 million. The total value of the arrested person, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office, amounted to about 1 billion 159 million rubles.
Businessmen Sergei Glyadelkin and Igor Tkach, victims of a criminal case of fraud, claimed this money, who filed a lawsuit against ex-Chekists for 638 million rubles, but the former defendant “outstripped” them. First, Andrei Vasiliev regained his watch and currency, asking the 235th garrison court to remove their arrest along with the termination of his criminal prosecution. There was a delay with real estate, because even before Andrey Vasiliev left the criminal case, the Prosecutor General’s Office applied to another civil court demanding the nationalization of his real estate in connection with violation of anti-corruption laws. The district court refused to confiscate watches and money. Now, after three courts have, in fact, freed Andrei Vasiliev from criminal and material liability, it seems that not only the victims, but also the supervision should forget about their claims to his property.