“She approached me with a request to open an IP in my name. So that the names of Sevastyanov, Sevastyanov do not appear, ”said Anton Sevastyanov, a witness in the case of the chief architect of Almetyevsk, in court. The father-in-law of the defendant explained that he became a nominal director, and the wife of the person involved, Svetlana, managed the business. She provided architectural services, which have now turned into episodes of a criminal case against her husband. The largest of them is a bribe of 424,000 rubles. Sevastyanov was supposed to receive it from a businessman for making changes to the land use rules for building multi-storey residential buildings. About what other details were revealed in court – in the report “BUSINESS Online”.
The case of the chief architect of Almetievsk has grown to four episodes
In the Almetyevsk city court, on the second attempt, a criminal case was started against the former chief architect of the city, 35-year-old Anton Sevastyanov. He was detained in June last year on suspicion of taking a bribe from a businessman. The high-profile case was investigated by the investigative department in the city of Almetyevsk. Now Sevastyanov is under house arrest.
The state prosecutor read out the accusation, which revealed interesting details – the number of episodes increased, as did the sane amount of bribes – from 130 thousand to 569 thousand rubles. Now in the case of the architect there are three episodes related to the receipt of a bribe, and one more – with obstruction of legitimate entrepreneurial activity (Article 169 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
According to the prosecutor, in May 2020, Sevastyanov asked his wife’s stepfather Sergei Grishin to open an individual entrepreneur in his name. Through him, Sevastyanov entered into contracts for the provision of “architectural services” and received money for this, which the investigation now considers a bribe.
The first and well-known episode of the criminal case from the very detention of Sevastyanov concerns the receipt of 130 thousand rubles for the guarantor of issuing a building permit from the owners of Zvezda LLC Alexei Leushin and Talgat Salakhov. BUSINESS Online covered this story in detail last year.
Salakhov has been trying to build a shopping center on Geophysical Street in his native Almetyevsk for 10 years. But his Zvezda LLC has not renewed the building permit since 2013. The prosecution believes that Sevastyanov let the businessmen know that he can solve the issue of issuing a building permit for money. An agreement was concluded between Zvezda and IP Grishin, according to which the IP had to make a draft design.
“In order to give legality to the receipt of funds, he instructed his wife, who was not aware of Sevastyanov’s intentions, to make a preliminary design of the object, transfer it to a representative of the Zvezda society, signing the transferred act of work performed,” the state prosecutor read out.
As Salakhov himself told BUSINESS Online, he really received a sketch from Sevastyanov’s wife, but this is not quite what he expected. “There (on the draft design – ed. note) there is no seal, nothing and the main thing – a building permit! the victim said. – We applied, we thought that they were all interconnected. We paid 130,000 for a draft design that we didn’t need. We have our own blueprint.” Salakhov never received a building permit. The businessman believes that he was deceived. But he did not report this to law enforcement agencies. The investigators themselves called him in the spring of 2022 and invited him to the investigative department to testify.
How Sevastyanov, according to the prosecution, received bribes
The second corruption episode is the smallest in terms of amount, but similar to the first. According to the prosecution, Sevastyanov received 15,000 rubles from another Almetyevsk businessman. In October 2020, the chief architect allegedly refused to approve the design of the entrance group of the cafe owned by Amidjon Dzhumaev without explaining the reason. Because of this, the entrepreneur was unable to open an institution in the shopping center.
Further, events developed almost identically to the first case: Sevastyanov and Dzhumaev entered into an agreement through the IP of the father-in-law, according to which the businessman was to receive a new draft design, which Sevastyanov, of course, promised to agree on. The chief architect fulfilled his promise, and handed over the passport of the outdoor media through his wife.
Dzhumaev, by the way, is the only victim in the case, but he did not appear at the court, because he is away. It is for this episode that Sevastyanov is charged with Art. 169 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
According to the latest episode, which appears in the case, Sevastyanov finally earned big. According to the prosecution, he received 424,000 rubles from SK Pervaya Liniya LLC. The founder of the society, judging by the data of “Contour.Focus”, Igor Khlobystov. Revenue at the end of 2021 decreased by 69%, the year ended with an indicator of 32.2 million rubles.
Pervaya Liniya appealed to the Almetyevsk executive committee to amend the rules for land use on five plots with a total area of more than 10 thousand square meters. m on Polevoy street. “Namely, changes to the area for building multi-storey residential buildings above 9 floors,” the state prosecutor specified.
Sevastyanov, who was a member of the commission to amend the land use rules, offered the company to resolve the issue for 424,000 rubles. And again under a fictitious contract for the provision of architectural services through IP Grishin. The defendant was to receive the monetary reward in two installments.
The architect received the first 212 thousand rubles immediately after the conclusion of the contract. The rest were to come after First Line received from Sevastyanov a draft design for the integrated development of the territory. But the suspect did not manage to receive the second part of the money – on June 2, 2022, he was detained.
Sevastyanov refused to comment on the criminal case in an interview with BUSINESS Online. In court, he was calm, positive, laughed in conversation with lawyers, but was silent during the trial itself. The defendant’s lawyer Rinat Vildanov told our correspondent that his client categorically does not admit his guilt.
Father-in-law Sevastyanov: “The stepdaughter came up with a request to open an IP in my name”
Grishin, the owner of the individual entrepreneur, was summoned for interrogation, to whose accounts, according to the investigation, Sevastyanov received bribes. In court, he explained that he was asked to open an individual entrepreneur by his stepdaughter, the wife of the chief architect, Svetlana Sevastyanova, who decided to open her own business for the provision of architectural services. She herself is in the case as a witness.
“She has an education as an engineer-architect. She approached me with a request to open an individual entrepreneur in my name, ”said Grishin. He added that he fully trusts Svetlana and therefore agreed.
“How did Svetlana motivate the need for registration of individual entrepreneurship by you, and not by herself?” the prosecutor asked the witness.
“One of the reasons is that she is Anton’s wife. So that the names of Sevastyanov, Sevastyanov (did not appear). One of the reasons was that I was Grishin – IP Grishin … Well, not to be like that … – the witness began to answer confusedly. “I can’t say for sure. I didn’t want to (register it) for myself, I wanted to open it to a third party.
– I understand you correctly, she did not want to advertise her activities?
– Well, yes. The fact that her husband is the chief architect of Almetyevsk.
Grishin confirmed that he was only a nominal entrepreneur, he did not have access to current accounts – everything was in charge of the wife of the chief architect.
After the interrogation, the prosecutor stated that Grishin’s testimony differed from those he gave during the preliminary investigation, and asked the judge to read it out. In them, Grishin said that Sevastyanov himself, and not his wife, asked him to open an IP together with his stepdaughter. And he allegedly motivated this by the fact that he is a municipal employee and he is forbidden to engage in entrepreneurial activities.
Another difference is that at the trial Grishin said that the Sevastyanov case was not discussed in any way in the family. But in his testimony, he said the opposite. “About a month ago, Anton and Svetlana came to us in Nizhnekamsk and brought contracts with them, explained that the UBEP was being checked, and asked me to at least read these contracts so that I would be aware. I didn’t conclude these agreements myself and, since I didn’t have time, I didn’t even read them, ”Judge Gulnara Bagautdinova read out the testimony given by Grishin during the preliminary investigation. And now the father-in-law said in court that there was no such conversation between him and Sevastyanov. And how the folder with documents got into his house, he does not know.
In the courtroom, Grishin retracted his previous testimony and insisted that Svetlana had asked the IP to open it. When giving his first testimony, he was influenced by the employees of the UBEP, he said. “Upon arrival at the UBEP, the officers said that there was no reason to drag Sveta here, because she could also be locked up there. This probably also played some role in giving such testimony, ”the witness explained.
“We can’t give permission for construction on a patch of land so that they earn money and leave”
As a witness, the court also questioned Denis Kosarev, deputy head of the district executive committee for construction. He explained that the chief architect does not have the authority to issue a building permit, he only coordinates the draft design, without which, by the way, the permit cannot be obtained. The official also explained that Leushin, the owner of Zvezda LLC, planned not to renew the construction permit for the facility, but to obtain a new one, since he decided to change the parameters of the building.
“We all know that this facility was under construction in 2018 and it collapsed. When I came to work, Leushin Alexey came to me with conversations “we want to resume construction”. And they wanted to make changes to the object, no longer the same as they built, but with changed parameters. I told him: “There are no questions, make a draft design and bring it to us, we’ll take a look together with the chief architect,” the witness said.
The executive committee did not receive any statements from the owners of Zvezda, he said.
“I said that the chief architect is the first to review all sketches. If he has questions, he makes changes, they redo it. The chief architect signs,” Kosarev said.
“That is, the appeal to Sevastyanov (in a conversation with Leushin) was precisely to coordinate the draft design?” – Sevastyanov’s defender Vildanov asked the witness. The deputy head of the executive committee replied that it was so.
“Tell me, please, after your explanations to Leushin, could he apply to Sevastyanov for a permit, or did he still understand the procedure as it should be?” Vildanov said.
“Yes, I can’t even imagine what he could have thought,” Kosarev replied and added that he explained it as best he could, and Leushin seemed to understand him then.
According to the last episode, where Sevastyanov allegedly promised to change the purpose of the site for the First Line company, Kosarev said that the landlord wanted to build three 14-story houses on the site on Polevaya Street. But the site was for industrial purposes, and the builders did not provide a project for the integrated development of the territory.
“I personally asked him (a representative of the company – ed.) the question: where are the entrances, where are the parking lots, where are the schools, the kindergarten? We can’t give permission for construction on a patch of land so that they earn money and leave, ”Kosarev noted.
Despite the fact that Sevastyanov was also at the meeting with representatives of the company, he did not independently make a decision to change the purpose of the site.
The last to be interrogated was Ilus Vildanov, head of the MBU Department of Ecology and Improvement. In the second episode, the court asked: how did Dzhumaev get a passport for outdoor media? And then it turned out that the passport of another Dzhumaev was attached to the case, not Amidjon Makhmanazarovich, who, according to the investigation, gave a bribe to Sevastyanov, but Abdulla Makhmanazarovich. Probably a brother. In addition, the date of receipt of the document did not match – it indicated June 8, 2021. And the entrepreneur and the chief architect, according to the prosecution, entered into an agreement between May 19 and October 28, 2020.
On this ambiguous note, the first session of the case ended. The next one is scheduled for February 28th.