The details of the criminal prosecution of the Deputy Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation Vladimir Tokarev, who was accused of embezzling 523 million rubles. on Friday arrested Khoroshevsky District Court of Moscow.
The police investigation believes that in the event of release on bail or placement under house arrest, an official with a residence permit in the Czech Republic and assets in this country will hide abroad, and using connections in government structures, will try to ruin the investigation.
Vladimir Tokarev was brought to court from the ITT near Komsomolskaya Square, where he had been since Wednesday. After reviewing the materials of the arrest case, the official’s defense filed a motion to hold hearings closed to the media, arguing that non-public information about the identity of the accused, including his illnesses, could be disclosed during the trial. The investigator was only in favor, since he also had something to hide from journalists – the details of both the crime itself, which the official was charged with, and information about its alleged participants.
Nevertheless, it became known that the investigator of the transport department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Central Federal District, seeking the arrest of Mr. Tokarev before March 18, in addition to the standard data that he is accused of committing a serious crime (up to ten years is provided for fraud on an especially large scale) conclusion), said that the Deputy Minister has a residence permit and real estate in the Czech Republic, where he can hide. To put pressure on the investigation, according to his representative, the official can use connections in the power structures.
Mr. Tokarev himself, denying involvement in the theft, said that he was ready to cooperate with the investigation. His defense offered bail for an amount that would suit the court, or, as an alternative to the pre-trial detention center, house arrest. As a result of a three-hour trial, Mr. Tokarev returned to the temporary detention center, from where he will soon be transferred to prison.
According to the investigation, he committed the crime charged against Mr. Tokarev before joining the civil service, being the first deputy director of Spetstransstroy LLC. The damage is estimated by the investigation at 523 million rubles.
In the case of fraud, we are talking about a project for the comprehensive reconstruction of the railway at the section named after Maxim Gorky-Kotelnikovo-Tikhoretskaya-Krymskaya. The customer in the project was RZDstroy JSC (a subsidiary of Russian Railways JSC), and one of the contractors was Spetstransstroy LLC, where Mr. Tokarev worked as Deputy General Director from 2016 to 2018. Work in the project was carried out from 2007 to 2018 in several regions of Russia, the volume of investments amounted to 130 billion rubles. After the completion of individual stages of construction, it became necessary to restore roads, including in the Timashevsky and Korenovsky districts of the Krasnodar Territory. According to investigators, the management of Spetstransstroy LLC, while performing work on these sections of roads, developed a scheme for the illegal withdrawal of customer funds. In particular, for the theft, annotations were used in the documentation on the purchase of inert materials mined in the quarries of the Krasnodar Territory. The investigation believes that real purchases of sand and crushed stone took place in nearby quarries, and according to reports, building materials were transported over considerable distances. In addition, the investigation believes that materials were used during construction that did not meet the specifications specified in the contracts.
The second defendant in the criminal case on fraud is Levan Goglidze, who served as deputy director of production at Spetstransstroy LLC. He was taken into custody in November last year.
As it became known to Kommersant, Levan Goglidze does not plead guilty and claims that he was not involved in concluding contracts and distributing funds, but was only responsible for the construction process, Dmitry Baykov, defendant’s defender, explained to Kommersant.
In addition to Levan Goglidze and Vladimir Tokarev, unidentified persons appear in the criminal case. According to Kommersant, Yury Reylyan, the former founder of Spetstransstroy LLC and the former deputy head of the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation, who was arrested for other theft in Irkutsk, is being checked for involvement in the crime.
Major financial violations committed during the implementation of the project for the reconstruction of the railway on the section named after Maxim Gorky-Kotelnikovo-Tikhoretskaya-Krymskaya first became known in August 2020, the FSB of Russia in the Krasnodar Territory reported that the damage to the federal budget and Russian Railways is estimated at 1 .5 billion rubles