The Leninsky District Court of Yekaterinburg rejected the claim of the former head of the Ministry for State Property Management of the Sverdlovsk Region (MUGISO) Alexei Pyankov, who challenged the decision of the draft board to cancel his mobilization. The ex-official is under investigation on charges of corruption, but in October he was called up to participate in a special military operation (SVO). At the request of the investigators, the draft board canceled its decision. Alexey Pyankov did not agree and filed a lawsuit to recognize the mobilization as legal.
According to the Leninsky District Court of Yekaterinburg, Alexey Pyankov was called up as part of the partial mobilization on October 24, 2022. Earlier, a Kommersant-Ural source in law enforcement agencies said that the ex-official went to the NVO zone a few days before the deadline for familiarizing himself with the materials of the criminal case, which made it impossible to complete the investigation.
The security forces believe that the ex-minister “received a military rank at the request of a number of respected persons.”
Alexey Pyankov headed the Ministry of State Property of the Sverdlovsk Region from 2012 to 2016. During this period, according to investigators, he created an organized criminal group (OCG), which included at least 13 people.
According to investigators, the results of the activities of the organized criminal group were multimillion-dollar theft, the destruction of a cultural heritage site, restrictions on the rights of entrepreneurs, and other grave consequences. Members of the organized crime group used various shell companies for enrichment, as well as offshore companies registered in Cyprus and Belize. According to investigators, the organized crime group participated in three episodes of bribery.
The ex-minister is charged with embezzlement of state property (Article 160 of the Criminal Code), abuse of office (Article 286 of the Criminal Code) and bribery (Article 290 of the Criminal Code).
In November 2022, the investigator for especially important cases of the 4th Investigation Department of the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation Dmitry Mogilnikov, according to the court decision, sent a submission to the draft commission for mobilization and the military commissar with a request to cancel the decision to call Alexei Pyankov. He noted that the ex-official is a defendant in a criminal case for a number of crimes and a preliminary investigation is underway against him, therefore, according to paragraph 3 of part 23 of the federal law “On military duty and military service”, he cannot be subject to conscription.
The draft commission agreed with the position of the investigation and canceled the mobilization of the former head of the MUGISO. Aleksey Pyankov did not agree with this and filed a lawsuit at the end of November to recognize the mobilization as legal. He noted that he had no outstanding or unexpunged convictions, which means, according to Art. 17 of the federal law “On mobilization training and mobilization”, there are no grounds for canceling the draft.
Alexey Pyankov, representatives of the draft commission and the military commissariat were absent at the meeting to consider the claim. As a result, the court recognized the ongoing preliminary investigation as a legal basis for canceling the mobilization.
The plaintiff’s lawyer Nikolai Kargapolov did not tell Kommersant-Ural where Alexey Pyankov is now and whether the decision of the Leninsky District Court would be appealed, citing the fact that he could not comment without the consent of the principal.