Several dozen people came to support Larin at the last meeting. In addition to his wife, son and mother, there were his former pupils, many of whom became famous athletes, their parents and friends. However, only a part of the audience was allowed to enter the small hall, which filled it to capacity. The rest had to wait for the denouement in the corridor. Due to the large volume of the verdict, the judge decided to read it while sitting, allowing the audience to sit down. The whole thing took three hours.
This is reported Companion
Initially, the announcement of the verdict was scheduled for Monday, September 26. However, Judge Larisa Semenova, known for passing the sentence on the former head of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, Alexei Ulyukaev, postponed it to the next morning. But then the procedure was postponed for a day.
The defendant admitted that, not excluding the real term, he collected a “package with things” on Sunday, although until the last he hoped for a verdict not related to deprivation of liberty. “There is a possibility of a bad outcome, so you need to be mentally prepared for it,” Nikolai Larin shared his mood with the radio station before the verdict was announced. “I don’t know if I’m mentally ready. But I am convinced that I do not pose any danger to society. Moreover, I think that I could still benefit this very society.”
Nikolai Larin, who headed the Chertanovo football academy from 2008 to 2021, was charged with two episodes of fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) in the amount of 12 million 184 thousand rubles and in the amount of 24 million 27 thousand rubles . The charge brought against him concerned the allocation of budget funds in 2019-2020 for the maintenance of professional athletes of the so-called higher sportsmanship. As an audit conducted at the club found out, 34 of them were no longer studying at school during these years, but they continued to allocate money for them, although someone left for another team, and someone left the sport altogether. Thus, the football academy “Chertanovo” illegally received 36 million 211 thousand rubles. Larin did not deny the postscript and immediately issued a confession. However, the coach claimed that he personally did not take a penny. According to him, he was forced to deal with postscripts in order to provide decent maintenance for the pupils and coaches of the club, who are financed on a per capita basis. During the investigation and trial, he was under house arrest.
Business FM Nikolai Larin told why he simply could not but admit his guilt.
“At the end of 2020, during a meeting with representatives of the Moscow Sports Committee on Zoom, I myself raised the question point-blank that there is a problem at the school: due to lack of funding, I have to deal with registration. That is, I was the first to identify the problem. Further, the chronology of events was as follows: the prosecutor’s office became interested in this and came with a check. Accordingly, it would be foolish on my part to deny, so I immediately confessed. It’s just that at that moment I didn’t suspect that my confession could be qualified under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation as fraud on an especially large scale.”
According to the coach, the existing federal per capita funding standards did not allow paying decent salaries to coaches. “Therefore, in order to pay them a more or less decent salary, especially for Moscow, I had to increase the lists of students,” he said. Larin noted that for effective work, the coach had to work with 10-15 athletes, while under the current standards, his group should have a hundred people. They also demanded money for the conclusion of employment contracts with athletes to participate in professional competitions. However, this was not included in state subsidies. They provided for the allocation of only 600-700 thousand rubles per athlete of the highest sportsmanship per year. Everything was included in this amount: the work of coaches, cleaners, educators, doctors, drivers and other personnel. Whereas the average salary of only one such player was about 200 thousand rubles a month.
Larin admits that already after the criminal case was opened, the problem with the financing of the school was resolved – others began to allocate money. “Thanks to the resonance and publicity, to what happened to me,” said the defendant.
At the trial, a number of Spartak players, as well as other teams of the Russian Premier League, testified in his defense. They spoke highly of the coaching and human qualities of Nikolai Larin. During the proceedings, former pupils transferred 16 million rubles to pay off the claim of the Moscow Sports Committee for 36.2 million rubles.
The fact that the students helped him, Nikolai Larin sees nothing surprising. “They do it, firstly, from the bottom of their hearts, and secondly, at school we always taught the guys not only football, but also to be decent people. When you treat people like relatives for a long time, then, accordingly, your relatives treat you the same way. If all of humanity lived the same way, the whole world would be better, ”said Larin.
During the debate of the parties, the prosecutor asked to be sentenced to four years and four months in a penal colony. In turn, the defendant’s lawyer, Maria Eismont, asked that her client be sentenced to a non-custodial sentence.
She proposed to reclassify the actions of her client from part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“fraud on an especially large scale”, up to ten years in prison) to part 2 of article 285.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“misuse of budget funds on an especially large scale”). This article, unlike the first, provides for the possibility of imposing a fine or forced labor.
However, the judge did not agree to this. She considered that the defendant committed fraud using his official position, “stealing funds belonging to the budget of the city of Moscow” and deceiving employees of the sports department.
In her verdict, she indicated that the defendant pleaded guilty in part. “He stated that he had no mercenary motive, since he did not spend money on himself, but spent it on the Chertanovo sports boarding school, on equipment, took athletes abroad,” Judge Larisa Semenova read out the testimony of the defendant. However, she regarded them as “a way of implementing the defense and the desire to avoid responsibility for what they have done.” At the same time, the judge did not accept the numerous testimonies of defense witnesses, who said that the director of the football academy spent a lot of time at school, knew each child personally by name, and with his arrival at the position, the school began to develop, collections from parents stopped, children were free began to provide equipment, take them to tournaments abroad and provide qualified medical care, including abroad.
“The court is critical of these testimonies, since the witnesses do not know anything about the theft,” the judge came to this conclusion. She satisfied the claim of Moskomsport for damages for 20 million 211 thousand rubles.
Despite the confession and partial reparation to the defendants for damages, which the judge attributed to extenuating circumstances, she did not find grounds for assigning a suspended sentence to the coach. As soon as the punishment was over, handcuffs snapped behind his back. Larin’s lawyers, Maria Eismont and Alexander Bozunov, said they did not agree with the verdict and intended to appeal against it. They called it “unfair”.
Source: “https://acompromat.com/articles/eksdirektora_futbolnoj_akademii_chertanovo_sud_udalil_s_polya.html”
Source: Elephant RU