Supplier equipment was accused of inflating the contract price.
As Kommersant has learned, the Royal City Court of the Moscow Region has begun a trial in the case of Andrei Sakharov, the general director of the Russian division of the international company Chiron Group – Chiron Rus. He is accused of fraudulent theft of funds Corporations tactical missile weapons (KTRV) when supplying her with a machine for 83.7 million rubles: according to the prosecution, the businessman significantly inflated the prices of German equipment components. The defense insists that the supplier acted within the framework of the contract, the examinations in the case do not stand up to criticism, and the equipment itself has been working properly for four years. Meanwhile, the beneficiary of Chiron Rus, Sergei Sirota, who previously worked as an adviser to the management of AvtoVAZ, has been put on the international wanted list.
The trial on charges of especially large-scale fraud against Andrei Sakharov (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) is taking place in the city court of Korolev near Moscow, chaired by Judge Dmitry Ganus. Already at the very beginning of the process, even before the stage of studying the materials of the criminal case, several important witnesses were questioned. According to Kommersant, we are talking about former and current employees of KTRV, a state corporation recognized as the injured party in the case. It should be noted that the corporation unites 39 enterprises engaged in the development and production of anti-ship, anti-radar and multi-purpose missiles designed to equip aircraft, ship and coastal tactical missile systems.
All witnesses were invited by the prosecution, however, as Mr. Sakharov’s lawyer Dmitry Kozin told Kommersant, their testimony played into the hands of the defense.
In particular, according to Mr. Kozin, the former chief engineer of KTRV confirmed that the equipment supplied to Chiron Rus in 2019 was checked by various customer services for compliance with the contract requirements, worked properly 24/7 and there were no complaints about it. Other witnesses, among other things, indicated that 83.7 million rubles for which the machine was purchased was not the maximum contract price offered by the applicants, and the state corporation even saved its money in this way.
“In the near future, it is planned to interrogate several more witnesses, after which the court will move on to examining the written materials of the case, which during the investigation totaled 11 volumes, and by the time the trial began in the Royal City Court, they had grown to 19 volumes,” added Mr. Kozin.
As Kommersant previously reported, an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the conclusion of the contract between Mr. Sakharov’s company and KTRV was launched by the Moscow region headquarters of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in November 2021, after a number of inspections by the prosecutor’s office and the FSB. Initially, the criminal case involved the leaders of Shiron Rus LLC, who were not identified by the investigation. This company is a Russian division of the large international company Chiron Group, specializing in the production of high-precision vertical milling machining centers with numerical control. On its website, the group positions itself as one of the leaders in the global and Russian market in the production of high-tech metalworking equipment. The entire line of Chiron machines has been manufactured in Russia under license since 2016 at the Tolyatti Chiron Rus, whose own products were classified as domestic production by a decision of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in 2017.
According to the investigation, the machine supplied by KTRV, contrary to the law, was not of Russian origin, but was equipped with German parts. In addition, they were sold, according to the Investigative Committee, at an inflated price: according to investigators, the price of the components was 46 million rubles.
Mr. Sakharov was initially a witness in the case and went to interrogations for about a year, testifying to the investigation. But in November last year he was detained and then arrested by the decision of the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow. However, in June 2023, the preventive measure was softened: the businessman was sent from the pre-trial detention center to house arrest, under which he is in the capital.
From the very beginning of the investigation, Andrei Sakharov denied his guilt, insisting on the absence of the crime itself. He explained the presence of foreign components in the supplied equipment by the fact that there is no complete ban on their installation, as well as by the customer’s requirements and the lack of domestic analogues. He also denied claims regarding inflated prices, explaining that the investigation took the “bare” cost of the German part of the components – 46 million rubles, but did not take into account that the machine also contains half of Russian parts, and in addition, there were expenses for transportation of equipment, design, installation, commissioning, maintenance, salaries of employees, etc. It can be noted that the investigation charges Mr. Sakharov with damages for the entire cost of the contract – 83.7 million rubles, while the representative of the injured party filed a civil claim for 37 million rubles – the difference between the above figure and the price of the equipment, which is being investigated by the investigation.
The entrepreneur’s defender connects all these conflicts with the results of examinations – financial, economic and commodity research – carried out as part of the investigation of the case.
“They were carried out by two experts – state and non-state, and, in our opinion, their conclusions do not stand up to criticism,” lawyer Dmitry Kozin told Kommersant. He noted that the defense will seek the removal of experts to testify at the trial.
It should also be noted that some time ago, from the case of Andrei Sakharov, ICR investigators isolated materials regarding the beneficiary of Chiron Rus, Sergei Sirota. A native of the Orenburg region, Sirota made most of his business career in the Samara region, including Tolyatti, where Chiron Rus is located. For some time, the businessman even served as an adviser to one of the leaders of AvtoVAZ. At the end of last year, Mr. Sirota was charged in absentia with the same charges as Mr. Sakharov for particularly large-scale fraud and he was put on the federal wanted list. In June of this year, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow also arrested the businessman in absentia. At the meeting, in particular, operational information was presented stating that the accused left Russia on November 12, 2022, flying to Turkey. Since then, according to detectives, he has never appeared in his homeland, but in 2023 he visited the United Arab Emirates, Germany and Uzbekistan.