As it became known to Kommersant, the Moscow courts again refused to consider the criminal case of the ex-head of the Russian Venture Company (RVC) Alexander Povalko, accused of abuse of office, which entailed grave consequences for RVC. The prosecutor’s office claimed that the violations of the Code of Criminal Procedure revealed during the initial proceedings had been eliminated, but the judges did not believe her. The defense expects that now the criminal prosecution of Mr. Povalko will be stopped.
The meeting in the Moscow City Court did not take much time. A representative of the Moscow prosecutor’s office told the court that the violations of the Code of Criminal Procedure identified during the previous hearings had been eliminated, the indictment had been drawn up properly, and therefore asked to cancel the decision of the Tagansky court, which returned the case to supervision in November last year.
In turn, the lawyer of the ex-head of the RVC, Tatyana Samsonova, said that the investigation had not decided what kind of interest her client could have committed the alleged crime – out of mercenary or other personal interest.
Recall that in April last year, the Moscow City Court considered a similar appeal of the Moscow City Prosecutor’s Office, after in February the Tagansky Court, after holding several meetings, returned the materials to the supervisory authority to eliminate violations of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Moscow City Court then agreed with the arguments that the indictment was dominated by a lack of specifics; the conclusions of the analytical examination are doubtful due to the fact that it was carried out by a specialist who had not previously dealt with such things. It was also noted that the investigation did not specify the official powers of Mr. Povalko, did not indicate the motives for committing the crime, did not establish what kind of grave consequences occurred as a result of the actions of the accused, and hence the amount of damage caused by RVC. The necessary financial and economic expertise in such cases, as it turned out, was not carried out at all.
During the re-trial, it turned out that the police did not work on all the errors.
RVC top manager Povalko came under criminal prosecution (the case file consists of 15 volumes) in June 2020. At first, the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the South-Western District of the capital was engaged in his case, which then transferred him to the Main Directorate of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow. Mr. Povalko was charged with abuse of power, which entailed grave consequences (part 2 of article 201 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), and then – part 3 of art. 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (abuse of official powers, also with grave consequences).
According to the plot of the case, in 2012 RVC and its wholly-owned subsidiary in the UK RVC signed an agreement to acquire 9.458 million preferred shares of British Soft Machines Inc., operating in the field of semiconductors, for $5 million. The company managed to return $2 million to its Russian partner, and the remaining $3 million, according to the agreement, Soft Machines Inc. should have returned in December 2022. The investigation accused Mr. Povalko of the fact that, although he carried out the orders of the board of directors, he nevertheless did not ensure the premature return of all $ 5 million. At the same time, it was not Mr. Povalko who signed the contract for the acquisition of shares, but his predecessor as CEO of RVC JSC Igor Agamirzyanov. But it was Povalko, who headed the venture company in the fall of 2016, who, according to investigators, should have accelerated the early return of funds to Russia, but did not.
In addition, the former CEO of RVC was accused of transferring in April 2017 to the account of the American company Alion Energy Inc. (builds solar power plants) $600,000. According to investigators, the investment committee of RVC and the board of directors of the venture company did not approve investments in Alion Energy. The company itself at the time of the transaction was in a pre-bankrupt state. Despite this, Mr. Povalko invested it, according to investigators, “in the interests of third parties” “out of selfish and other personal interests.”
Mr. Povalko, as before, denies his guilt. According to lawyer Tatyana Samsonova, the defense no longer knows what the investigation and the prosecutor’s office will do now, although, according to her, the conclusion is obvious: the investigation must be stopped.
