As it became known to Kommersant, the Nikulinsky District Court of Moscow returned to the prosecutor’s office a high-profile criminal case on large-scale illegal logging for bribes on the territory of military units located from the Moscow region to the Far East. The vacated land, according to investigators, was given to merchants for landfills or cottage development, and valuable wood species were sold, including to China. The main person involved in the investigation is the former head of the department of property relations (DIR) of the Ministry of Defense Dmitry Kurakin, who replaced the infamous Yevgenia Vasilyeva in this post in 2012. The official was detained when he was already deputy chairman of the government of the Moscow region – the minister of ecology and nature management. The damage in the case is estimated at 2.7 billion rubles.
The consideration of the criminal case against the former head of the DIO of the Ministry of Defense Dmitry Kurakin, the head of the FGAU Oboronles Vladislav Kholodkov and the ex-head of the JSC Malta Military Forestry Maxim Ana Nikulinsky District Court began in January of this year. The defendants are charged with taking bribes on an especially large scale and abuse of office (part 6 of article 290 and part 3 of article 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). In addition, Mr. Kurakin was also charged with the illegal manufacture of weapons, as well as possession of several unregistered hunting rifles and carbines (part 1 of article 223 and part 1 of article 222 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
However, judge Natalya Figurina did not manage to advance far. There were only three hearings in the case.
When the turn came to the presentation of evidence, it turned out that there was uncertainty with the place and time of the crimes, and in addition, from the indictment, it was not clear to the court who exactly were the bribe givers.
As a result, the court came to the conclusion that, based on the materials presented by the investigation, it was impossible to pass a sentence or other decision, and returned the case to the prosecutor’s office to eliminate violations of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The supervisory authority did not agree with this decision of Judge Figurina and filed an appeal against him. The defendants’ lawyers, according to Kommersant’s information, did not object to the return of the case, appealing only against the detention of their clients.
As Kommersant already told, a criminal case on fraud with forest lands that were on the balance sheet of the Ministry of Defense was initiated in September 2018 by the Main Military Investigation Department of the TFR. It all started with several episodes of corruption, in which the leadership of the FGKU “Forestry and Nature Management Department” of the Ministry of Defense (ULHiP) and businessmen from three LLCs appeared. The first detainees were the former chief specialist-expert of the secretariat of one of the deputy ministers of defense of Russia, Ilya Tarasevich, and the head of the ULKhiP, Mikhail Borisov. The first during the alleged fraud was the leading engineer of the ULKhIP (part of the department of military property) of the Ministry of Defense and was responsible for interaction with 39 branches in 62 subjects of Russia, on the balance of which there are almost 5 million hectares of land in the places of deployment of military units.
Ilya Tarasevich and Mikhail Borisov were accused of organizing the allocation of land plots of the military department to businessmen in the Noginsk urban district of the Moscow region, as well as in the Nizhny Novgorod and Chelyabinsk regions, which were used for landfills or the construction of cottage settlements. The defendants were eventually charged with taking bribes and abuse of power, almost a dozen businessmen who confessed and cooperated with the investigation were accused of giving bribes and mediation in this (part 5 of article 291 and part 4 of article 291.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) , but was released from criminal liability in connection with active repentance. According to Kommersant’s information, allegedly it was the testimony of Tarasevich and Borisov, who cooperated with the investigation, that led in November 2020 to the arrests of Dmitry Kurakin and Vladislav Kholodkov, who had transferred from the Ministry of Defense to the administration of the Moscow Region two years earlier. The first was the deputy chairman of the government there – the minister of ecology and nature management, and Mr. Kholodkov was the first deputy minister. The company in the pre-trial detention center was made up of the former head of JSC “Malta military forestry” Maxim An. This structure was one of the largest forestry enterprises in the military department, which established it in 2009. After Dmitry Kurakin left the DIO, the organization ceased its activities, and Mr. An switched to the disposal of household waste, heading Oboronspecresurs LLC near Moscow (ceased to exist in June 2021).
According to security officials, official Kurakin began testing mass deforestation under the guise of sanitary (removal of dead and diseased trees, windbreak, etc.) on the territory of military units using falsified documents in the Western Military District in 2014.
Here, according to law enforcement officers, the forest was destroyed for bribes in the interests of, as a rule, businessmen from the capital and Moscow region, who set up landfills on the plots. In particular, such cases were identified in the Moscow and Vladimir regions. This activity, as established by the GUEBiPK Ministry of Internal Affairs, was carried out at the direction of Mr. Kurakin by Maxim An.
The real group of Dmitry Kurakin, according to the TFR, deployed in 2016 in the Central and Eastern military districts. According to investigators, the head of the DIO managed to convince his leadership that recreational activities in the taiga massifs on the territory of local military units have not been carried out for more than 20 years and there is an urgent need for this. As a result, according to the investigation, on the basis of fictitious acts of forest pathological surveys about the alleged massive damage and death of forest plantations and the need in connection with this to carry out continuous sanitary deforestation, completely healthy cedars and larches, as well as centuries-old pines, went under the axe. According to law enforcement officers, Vladislav Kholodkov, the head of Oboronles, was responsible for the sale of the so-called commercial timber, which went mainly to China, at the direction of Mr. Kurakin. In the Moscow region and other regions of the Central Federal District, landfills for landfills appeared on the plots, and in some cases, after the transfer of land to local governments, cottage settlements.
According to Kommersant, only a small part of the episodes of the illegal activities of the defendants has reached the court so far. In total, they were charged with taking bribes from merchants in the amount of more than 60 million rubles, and the damage in the case is estimated at this stage at 2.7 billion rubles.
It should be noted that the cases against two more defendants who managed to escape abroad have been separated into a separate proceeding. At the request of the investigation, the Basmanny District Court of Moscow arrested Daniil Sukhanov, a former adviser to Dmitry Kurakin in the Moscow Region government, in absentia. He moved to this position together with the chief from the DIO of the Ministry of Defense, where he was the deputy of Mr. Kurakin and oversaw the work of the Territorial Forestry Department of the Ministry of Defense. Also on the wanted list is the former general director of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “St. Petersburg Engineering and Technical Center of the Ministry of Defense” Alexei Kupriyanov.