The Golovinsky Court of the capital sentenced employees of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Administration of Civil Airports” Nikolai Lubentsov and Alexei Gubin to suspended sentences. They were found guilty of abuse of official powers when accepting objects for Vnukovo Airport. According to the investigation, the actions of officials caused damage in the amount of more than 700 million rubles. The defense does not agree with this and plans to appeal the verdict to the Moscow City Court.
The criminal case was initiated based on the results of an audit conducted by the FSB department “T” (deals with offenses in transport) at the request of Vnukovo Airport. It was based on the acceptance of two facilities – a treatment plant for surface water runoff and a site for the treatment of aircraft with anti-icing liquid for Vnukovo Airport. More than 720 million rubles were allocated from the budget for this.
In July 2015, Lubentsov, Head of the Warranty Liabilities Department of the Capital Construction Department, and Gubin, Chief Specialist of the Capital Construction Department of the same organization, who were members of the selection committee of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Administration of Civil Airports (and Airfields)” (FSUE “AGA”), signed the relevant acceptance certificates. Permissions were given to put the facilities into operation. However, law enforcement officers came to the conclusion that they either do not work or do not work properly.
In 2018, Nikolai Lubentsov and Aleksey Gubin were charged with abuse of official powers that entailed grave consequences (part 3 of article 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). They were arrested. But already two months later they were transferred under house arrest, and then completely on bail. Under it, they were on the day of the verdict. Both were neither fired nor suspended after their release and returned to work.
Another defendant in the case, Dmitry Smirnov, head of the capital construction department of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise AGA, chose to plead guilty by signing a pre-trial cooperation agreement with the investigation. In September 2020, the Solntsevsky Court of Moscow sentenced him to a three-year suspended sentence.
The trial in the case of Lubentsov and Gubin, who pleaded not guilty, lasted more than two years in court. For the first time, it appeared in the Golovinsky Court in the fall of 2020, and in November 2021, at the request of the defense, the court returned it for further investigation. Then the court actually agreed with the arguments of the lawyers, who spoke about numerous violations during the investigation. One of the main ones, according to the defense, was that the forensic construction and technical expertise carried out in the case was paid not from the federal budget, but by the joint-stock company Vnukovo International Airport, which was the applicant in the case and tried to intervene as a victim. (in the end, Rosaviatsia was recognized as it. – Business FM). At the same time, the study itself, which established the damage at 720 million rubles, was conducted at the Bogatikov Laboratory Center for Expert Analytical Research, and not at state expert institutions belonging to the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the Investigative Committee.
In addition, the materials of the case actually contradicted the charges brought against them. So, according to the lawyer of Nikolai Lubentsov, Mikhail Korchagin, it said that the defendants hurried to sign the acts of acceptance of objects before the relevant acts were signed by the first official acts of the customer (FGUP AGA) and the contractor – the company Transportmekhanizatsiya. However, the documents available in the case denied this. “We get into the box with material evidence and find there the original of one of these acts. We are told that you accepted the facility where commissioning work was not carried out, and we get a commissioning certificate signed by various organizations, including Vnukovo Airport, ”the defender told Business FM. He added that prior to the signing of the documents by the defendants, Rostekhnadzor issued a conclusion that all facilities were built in accordance with the project.
However, the Moscow City Court, on the proposal of the prosecutor’s office, in January 2022 canceled the decision to return the case for further investigation, instructing the district court to evaluate the facts mentioned in the verdict. The case went to a new circle in March 2022. The defendants still pleaded not guilty. It is noteworthy that during the debate of the parties, the prosecutor’s office asked for five years of suspended imprisonment for the defendants each. Such a proposal is usually considered a compromise.
Judge Anna Koroleva gave the defendants a year less – four years of probation. In addition, the court banned Lubentsov and Aleksey Gubin from holding positions in state institutions related to the performance of administrative and economic functions for a period of two and three years, respectively. In accordance with the new rules, the introductory and operative parts of the verdict were announced, so it is not clear what formed its basis. Mikhail Korchagin stated that the convicts and their lawyers did not agree with him and intended to file an appeal.
The defender said that the airport facilities mentioned in the case (a number of frame buildings with electronics, tanks and motors) have been under arrest since 2018 and are still not used. “Although a number of checks, which were both before and after the initiation of the case, showed that wastewater is supplied to the treatment facilities, which do not correspond to those laid down in the project. That is, treatment facilities simply cannot produce normal water at the outlet, because water with a thousand-fold violation of concentration enters at the entrance, ”Korchagin noted. He does not agree with the version of the investigation about the inoperability of the received objects.