Source Court translation scams may be out of date before the verdict. As it became known to Kommersant, the court refused to expedite the consideration of a high-profile criminal case, the defendants of which are the former heads of the judicial departments in Moscow and the Moscow Region of the Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of Russia. Eight defendants are charged with embezzlement of more than 500 million rubles allocated to pay for the services of translators in the courts of the capital and the Moscow region. In its statement, the prosecutor's office insisted on holding meetings daily, and not three times a week, as is the case now. The supervisory authority fears that if the process is not accelerated, the defendants may avoid liability due to the statute of limitations. Disagreeing with the prosecutor's office, the court in its decision noted that the delay in the hearings was more to blame for the investigation, which dealt with this case for more than five years.
With an unusual for the judicial system statement about the need to increase the pace of consideration of a resonant criminal case, the Kalininsky District Court of the Tver Region was addressed by the deputy prosecutor of the region, Sergei Nikiforov. From his explanations, we can conclude that the Prosecutor General's Office, which controls this case, forced him to spur the course of the trial. Recall that the defendants in the investigation are the former head of the judicial department in Moscow Vyacheslav Lipezin, his deputies Lyubov Lopatina and Igor Kudryavtsev, as well as the former head of the Moscow region department Valery Kuzmich and his deputy Evgenia Titova. All of them are accused of committing crimes under Part 4 of Art. 159 and part 3 of Art. 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (large-scale fraud committed by an organized group, and abuse of power with grave consequences). Three more defendants, managers of Rabicon K LLC Tatyana Poroskun, Svetlana Echina and Elena Kondratyuk, are charged with fraud only. None of them plead guilty.
462 volumes of this criminal case were received from the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to the Kalininsky District Court on February 18, 2020. Since then, Mr. Nikiforov noted in his speech in court, 13 witnesses have been interrogated, the testimony of the victim's representative has been read out, and written evidence contained in 106 volumes of the case has been partially examined. At the same time, the representative of the supervisory authority was categorically not satisfied with the timetable established by the court for the consideration of the case – three days a week. “Given the volume of unexamined evidence and the postponement of hearings on various grounds, it is necessary to consider this case on a daily basis,” Sergei Nikiforov said. Otherwise, according to him, the defendants can avoid liability due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution. about. The chairman of the district court, Larisa Tiranov, refused to speed up the process.
It follows from her decision that restrictions related to the spread of COVID-19 intervened at first. Because of them, the defendants living in Moscow and the Moscow region could not travel to Tver for a total of about nine months. When the case nevertheless got off the ground, it took the court quite a lot of time to thoroughly examine the written evidence, protocols of investigative and procedural actions, and also to summon 864 witnesses for the prosecution from the capital and the Moscow region for questioning.
In conclusion, Larisa Tiranova drew the attention of the state prosecutor to the fact that the Investigative Committee of Russia (TFR) took more than five years to investigate this criminal case. “I see no grounds for speeding up the consideration of the case,” the judge summed up in her ruling.
Recall that the organizer of the fraud in the judiciary, according to the findings of the investigation, was the founder of the Rabicon K company, Iraida Landarenko, who lives in the United States, who has provided translation services to the courts of the capital region for many years. Having entered into a criminal conspiracy with the then heads of the judicial departments of Moscow and the region, Lipezin and Kuzmich, the case says, the businesswoman developed together with them a scheme for embezzlement of budgetary funds allocated to pay translators in courts.
Using the fact that the basis for payments is the decision or ruling of the judges, which the interpreters participating in the meetings received in their hands, the members of the group in 2012-2014, with the help of the same linguists, organized a mass forgery of court decisions in the Rabicon K office. The amended documents, according to which the number of hours worked by translators and the payments due to them increased several times, were sent to the judicial departments of Moscow and the region. In turn, the officials involved in the criminal scheme made payments without checking the amounts indicated in the court decisions.
The frauds were revealed by the Council of Judges of Moscow, who drew attention to the fact that the cost of translators, which annually amounted to 5-7 million rubles, has increased almost a hundred times since 2012.
Note that at first the ICR completed criminal cases against several translators who were accomplices in the theft. In a special order, they were sentenced to suspended sentences. Then the general director of Rabicon K, Umar Zarobekov, and the company's manager, Lyudmila Shashkova, were brought to justice. Both pleaded guilty and received special orders of four and three years in prison, respectively.
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