On October 9, 2018, Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia Viktor Grin signed the decision to refuse to approve the indictment in the Rusalyansstroy case and send it for additional investigation. The reason for this decision was the violation of the rights of one of the accused, Dmitry Bushmanov, to defense: the investigation did not familiarize his lawyer with the case materials. “The elementary requirement of the Code of Criminal Procedure was ignored about the need to notify the lawyer in advance about the end of the investigation and to provide him with the opportunity to familiarize himself with the case,” explained Dmitry Sokolov, lawyer representing the interests of the accused Eckert, to Kommersant. “If this violation had somehow gone unnoticed by the supervisory authority, then it would certainly have been revealed by the court, since the defense would certainly have pointed to this,” Mr. Sokolov added. He noted that the Prosecutor General’s Office paid attention to the miscalculation of the investigation even without a complaint from the defense.
Recall that in 2014 Rusalyansstroy was entrusted with the construction of strategic facilities for the Ministry of Defense in the Arctic. An advance payment of just over 3 billion rubles was allocated for the work. Another 1 billion, according to entrepreneurs, they invested from their own and borrowed funds. Comfortable barracks built by the Rusalyansstroy company for military personnel who take up combat duty on Wrangel Island and Cape Schmidt were even shown on federal television channels.
However, in March 2016, the entrepreneurs Bushmanov and Eckert were accused of embezzling the entire allocated advance payment and arrested, although, as the defense pointed out, out of the three contracts concluded, one was fully completed, and for the other two, the work also entered the stage of acceptance by the customer. It is worth noting that initially the entrepreneurs were charged with embezzlement of 3.2 billion rubles, but the defendants and their lawyers managed to prove through the Moscow Arbitration Court that the construction of one of the facilities – a combat duty station on Novaya Zemlya – was carried out in accordance with the contract with the customer. The object itself was accepted into operation by the Ministry of Defense. After the court decision came into force, the investigation reduced the amount of alleged embezzlement by 300 million rubles.
According to the representatives of the defendants, the construction of other facilities, including those being built on Wrangel Island and Cape Schmidt, proceeded at a normal pace. According to them, these facilities were 60-80 percent complete, but unexpectedly for the builders, the customer, represented by GUIR No. 2 at Spetsstroy, terminated the contract and stopped funding. The position of the Arctic builders was confirmed to a certain extent by the Moscow Arbitration Court, which recognized that it was not businessmen who owed the customer, but the customer owed them. The court found that Eckert and Bushmanov really spent not only budgetary, but also their own funds on military facilities in the Arctic – in the amount of more than 1 billion rubles.
It should be noted that the Arctic case is being returned for additional investigation for the second time. Previously, this was done by the Tagansky District Court of Moscow, which in March 2018 found that the investigation violated the defendants’ rights to defense: the defendants Bushmanov and Eckert were charged in violation of the law.
At the same time, as lawyer Sokolov says, the investigation can make the same mistake a third time. According to him, on October 17, Eckert and Bushmanov were charged again in the absence of their lawyers. “We received notifications that charges would be filed on October 16, but in fact it happened on October 17,” Mr. Sokolov complained. He believes that, most likely, the case will be returned again, since the Prosecutor General’s Office will not pass by such an obvious mistake. “The main reason why this case is stalling is the lack of an evidence base in the investigation,” Mr. Sokolov is sure. He recalled that Boris Titov, Commissioner for Entrepreneurs’ Rights under the President of the Russian Federation, also supported the position of the defense, stating that “there are no grounds for the detention of Alexei Eckert and Dmitry Bushmanov.” Mr. Titov even included both in the list of entrepreneurs who suffered from raiding and illegal criminal prosecution.
