As it became known to Kommersant, the Investigative Committee brought new charges against the defendants in a high-profile criminal case about an attempt to imprison on false charges of preparing the murder of the owners of a large company Merlion and to carry out a raider takeover of their business. The defendants, according to investigators, acted as part of an organized crime community, which included solvers and employees of the committee itself. As bribes for not bringing businessmen to criminal responsibility, the OPS planned to receive 15 billion rubles. As part of the investigation, an employee of the committee was also arrested.
The Main Investigation Department of the TFR has weighed down the charges in a criminal case on an attempt to seize the assets of the Merlion company. According to investigators, a whole criminal community (Article 210 of the Criminal Code), organized by solvers Vitaly Kachur and his son, ex-employee of the ICR Kirill Kachur, acted against the businessmen. The committee’s investigator Alexei Nesnov and former Merlion CEO Vyacheslav Simonenko were also members of the community. The other day they were accompanied by another employee of the TFR – senior inspector of the 8th department of the personnel department of the committee Alexander Kireev, who was arrested by the Basmanny Court on the corresponding charge.
The investigation team, which included 25 investigators from the Department for the Investigation of Crimes Committed by Law Enforcement Officials of the Main Investigative Directorate of the ICR, and was headed by Vitaly Guskov, an investigator for especially important cases, established that the OPS was organized by Mr. Kachur back in 2019. The purpose of the community, the case says, was the commission of grave and especially grave crimes – theft by fraud on an especially large scale (Article 159 of the Criminal Code) of property belonging to persons engaged in commercial activities, extortion of bribes from them on an especially large scale (Article 290 of the Criminal Code ), falsification of evidence in a criminal case (Article 303 of the Criminal Code), criminal prosecution of obviously innocent persons (Article 299 of the Criminal Code), illegal detention (Article 301 of the Criminal Code) and other crimes. They involved the former top manager of Merlion Simonenko, the investigator of the Investigative Committee of the ICR for the North-Western District of Moscow Nesnov, the senior inspector Kireev and “other persons” into the criminal community.
Mr. Simonenko, according to the attackers’ plan, filed a false report about the arson of his house in Krasnogorsk with local law enforcement agencies.
Based on the results of the check, the arguments set forth in his statement were not confirmed and the initiation of a criminal case was denied. After that, Inspector Kireev organized the cancellation of this procedural decision and the transfer of the material to another investigator of the Investigative Committee of the ICR Nesnov, who initiated the illegal criminal prosecution of Merlion co-owners Oleg Karchev, Vladislav Mangutov, Alexei Abramov and the top manager of the company Boris Levin “with the aim of illegally taking their property.” Businessmen were detained and arrested on charges of attempted murder and intentional damage or destruction of other people’s property (Articles 105 and 167 of the Criminal Code). At the same time, Grigory Zherenov, a veteran of hostilities in Donbass, having issued a confession, testified that, by order of Mr. Levin, he tried to burn Mr. Simonenko and his family members along with the house. Subsequently, Mr. Zherenov, who decided to cooperate with the investigation, was convicted in a special order for 2.5 years for false denunciation.
After the co-owners of Merlion were in custody, the members of the organized criminal group, according to the investigation, began to extort 5 billion rubles each. each of them.
To do this, Oleg Pokrovsky, previously convicted of fraud, was involved in the case, who, for a fee, agreed to act as an intermediary in reaching an agreement and in receiving and transferring bribes from prisoners for their release from the pre-trial detention center and termination of their criminal prosecution. The lawyer Vadim Lyalin, an acquaintance of Vitaly Kachur’s, tried to persuade them to admit their guilt, cooperate and pay off. At one time he actively defended the defendants.
The attackers, according to investigators, could not implement the plan for reasons beyond their control – the businessmen refused to pay the extortionists, and the lawyers of the co-owners of Merlion succeeded in transferring the case to the central office of the TFR. There, having figured it out, the businessmen were released, recognizing their right to rehabilitation, and Messrs. Simonenko, Lyalin and Zherenov were taken into custody. The rest of the defendants managed to escape abroad. Recently, the Basmanny Court extended Mr. Simonenko’s preventive measure in the form of arrest. In addition to participating in the OPS, he, like other defendants, is charged with bribery (Article 290 of the Criminal Code) and a number of other crimes.
