The practice of confiscating property from employees of government bodies is not new, but municipal deputies of St. Petersburg fall under this rule almost for the first time, although they do not receive salaries and have minimal powers. Fontanka spoke with the lawyer of the communist Alexei Starikov, who lost his car, about the court decision.
Alexey Starikov is a former municipal deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the Balkansky district in the south of St. Petersburg. This is not the first time he has become a deputy, before that he was also elected in the Frunzensky district, only in the neighboring, 75th municipality. Starikov is not an oppositionist. In 2019, he even tried to remove competitors from the Party of Growth from the elections through the courts. Judging by the tags in the GetContact application, most of his life is still occupied by business. Starikov works as a commercial director at Gostar LLC and specializes in the recycling of tires (at least, this is how users of the application identify him).
According to the declaration, for the past three years, Starikov indicated his income in the region of 200 thousand (such a small annual income is often found among those who are paid a gray salary). This year, he would not have had to inform the authorities about this – the rules for filing declarations have changed a year after the start of the special operation. However, when questions arose about Starikov’s financial statements last year, he gave up his mandate. Fontanka’s interlocutors say that the Smolny officials who checked the documentation even invited him for explanations, but it was in the midst of mobilization (just then, several municipalities were issued subpoenas directly to the district administration) and either because of this, or because For another reason Starikov did not come.
However, he himself refused to comment on what was connected with his financial affairs, and explained the resignation of the deputy by the fact that he had little time for social work.
At the end of last year, after checking the declarations, the prosecutor’s office of St. Petersburg filed a lawsuit. The lawsuit claimed that Starikov’s expenses exceeded his income by more than 3 million, in connection with this, the prosecutor proposed to withdraw Volkswagen Tuareg cars and an apartment in favor of the state. As a result, after several months of studying the case, the court only partially agreed with the prosecutor and confiscated the car from the ex-deputy.
Starikov offered Fontanka to find out the vicissitudes of the trial from his lawyer Anatoly Nesterenko. He, in turn, called the court’s decision unreasonable and noted that, according to the logic of the law, officials who have access to the budget, receive salaries from the state and simply have influence on state processes should not be allowed to live beyond their means. All this concerns a municipal deputy to a lesser extent – in St. Petersburg, members of municipal councils can only come to meetings and vote, and if they do not have a majority in the council, then their decisions will not be approved. The budget and contracts are influenced by the local administration, and the council only approves the items of expenditure.
“The position of a deputy of the Balkansky municipal district does not imply the disposal of funds and the adoption of individual decisions that fall within the competence of the executive branch. Accordingly, Starikov A.V. objectively could not have committed a corruption offense,” the lawyer wrote in response to the claim of the prosecutor’s office.
As follows from the response to the statement of claim, the deputy bought an apartment for 5 million in 2020 (taking 4 million rubles on credit), a car made in 2013 cost him 1.2 million rubles. At the same time, in 2016, the Starikov family received an insurance payment of 282 thousand rubles due to a stolen car. About 3 million rubles were given to the family by relatives and 500 thousand were given in debt.
As the court considered, the Starikovs could only partially confirm the income, therefore, they excluded the apartment from the requirements to withdraw the apartment in favor of the state, but did not change the requirements regarding the car. According to Nesterenko, as a result, the family of the ex-deputy, unless the court of appeal decides otherwise, will be seized in favor of the state car of 2013. The car, according to the defender, was extremely necessary in the family – the Starikovs have two small children.
The lawyer does not agree with the court decision also because he considers the method of calculation to be incorrect: it does not follow from the explanations of the Ministry of Labor and federal law that it is necessary to take into account not only income that preceded the reporting period, but also expenses. And in 2018, Starikov also bought an apartment, and before that he sold a share in a joint apartment with his father. “Accordingly, when calculating income for the three years (2017-2019) preceding the reporting period (from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020), the St. .,” says the lawyer in response to the claim.
“Starikov and his wife have had continuous work experience since 1999 and 2004. Thus, with a reasonable degree of certainty, it can be argued that the Starikov spouses had funds in the amount of 1,200,000 rubles to purchase a car and 1,130,000 rubles to purchase an apartment, ”the lawyer assures.
When asked why Starikov was chosen for execution, who is not very involved in the political processes of the city and had no conflicts with anyone, the participants in the process only shrug their shoulders – perhaps, they say, on the eve of the elections (municipal elections will be held in a year) authorities decided to test the mechanism of pressure on the deputies.
Judging by judicial practice, property has not yet been taken away from municipal deputies, although their colleagues have found themselves in similar situations. In 2017, a car, a tractor and an apartment were taken away from the deputy head of the local administration of the municipality in the Saratov region by a court decision (almost 3 million rubles in total). In 2017, the prosecutor’s office tried to take away real estate from a deputy of the Omsk City Council (local newspapers came out with headlines: “For the first time in the last 100 years, the property of the wife of a deputy of the City Council of Omsk was nationalized”), the cassation overturned the court’s decision. In 2021, the prosecutor’s office tried to seize an apartment from the Minister of Finance of the Orenburg Region – she allegedly made expenses for 30 million rubles, but could not prove it, the court refused.
