Alexander Postrigan’s strict regime was extended to 18 years
Experts interviewed by Izvestia called the sentence to the ex-head of the Klinsky district of the Moscow region an excessively harsh punishment, drawing attention to his age. On November 20, the court decided that the 74-year-old Alexander Postrigan will spend 18 years in a maximum security colony. The former official was found guilty, in particular, of creating an organized criminal community and illegal seizure of state and municipal property. He involved his relatives and acquaintances in property transactions. Among the objects that Postrigan illegally alienated in favor of his loved ones are boiler houses, kindergartens, cultural heritage monuments, a cinema, and even the only maternity hospital in the city.
Why was the ex-official sentenced?
On November 20, the Klin City Court of the Moscow Region sentenced the former head of the Klinsky district, Alexander Postrigan, to 18 years in a maximum security colony. The case of creating a criminal community was already his second. In December 2020, tonsure sentenced to 15 years in prison strict regime and a fine of 116 million rubles for a bribe on an especially large scale.
In the new case, the state prosecution asked for 21 years in prison for the ex-official. The accused is now 74 years old. He was the head of the Klinsky district from 1996 to 2014, and then retired. From the indictment (available to Izvestia), it follows that from August 2003 to June 2018, Postrigan led an organized criminal community (OCS), in which he involved his relatives and acquaintances, as well as the management of a number of companies. They were engaged in the illegal transfer of state real estate into personal ownership.
The second trial took more than two years. The prosecution managed to prove the involvement of Postrigan and his accomplices in the theft of more than 72 million rubles. The total market value of property legalized by members of the criminal community exceeded 68 million rubles, according to a report from the Moscow Region prosecutor’s office.
In addition to Postrigan, there were three more defendants in the dock: the general director of the legal services center Alexey Poluninlawyer Vadim Ermoshkin and expert Andrey Beketov. They were accused of participating in an organized crime group, money laundering, embezzlement, embezzlement and fraud on a particularly large scale. All of them received sentences ranging from five and a half to 12 and a half years in prison.
Beketov partially agreed with the charges, the rest did not admit guilt.
Postrigan’s wife Elena and his son are also involved in the case. Valery and son-in-law Valery Arakelov. They fled the investigation and are wanted. As the Moscow Region Prosecutor’s Office previously reported, in 2021 the extradition process from Spain was launched against Valery Postrigan. Izvestia’s source in law enforcement agencies reported that so far the Spanish authorities have not been able to obtain the extradition of the ex-official’s son.
According to the prosecution, it was Alexander Postrigan who first developed a detailed criminal plan for the appropriation and theft of property and land, and then began to select members of the organized criminal group. Next, its members created fictitious contracts, organized competitions and auctions, and prepared documents for the illegal alienation and legalization of municipal property. The court questioned 30 witnesses.
But, according to the lawyer of the accused Alexei Polunin, none of them gave evidence incriminating the defendants in the case. Postrigan even called the charges “an investigative mistake.” The defendants’ defense cited numerous deficiencies in the indictment and tried to convince the court to return the case to the prosecutor’s office, but this was denied.
Experts interviewed by Izvestia consider the imposed punishment to be excessive. Thus, lawyer Vladimir Postanyuk said that such a sentence for the 74-year-old defendant would, in fact, be a death sentence.
“In this case, it is impossible to talk about the humanity and fairness of the punishment, and these principles are inextricably linked with its legality,” the lawyer believes.
In his opinion, when assigning a punishment, the court must first of all proceed from the fact that the person is capable of re-education. He also recalled that in criminal law there is a rule that upon reaching the age of 65, the maximum penalty is not imposed.
In December 2020, the court found Postrigan guilty of receiving a bribe in the form of construction materials and services worth 19 million rubles from the head of one of the local enterprises between 2010 and 2011.
This was a reward for assistance in obtaining a plot of land for rent, signing permits for the commissioning of unfinished apartment buildings, as well as for general patronage.
In September 2019, property worth 9 billion rubles was confiscated from Postrigan. We are talking about 1.7 thousand real estate objects (mainly land plots in the Klinsky district), several cars and 5 billion rubles in cash. All this was turned into state income.
All in the family
Earlier, Izvestia managed to find out the details of the scheme for the alienation of municipal property organized by Postrigan. As the former editor of the newspaper “Consent and Truth,” a local historian and civil activist, told the publication Petr Lipatovthe ex-official transferred the property to his son, and Postrigan’s wife, the head of the Klin registration chamber, was in charge of processing the transactions.
Over the 17 years of Postrigan’s leadership, the Klinsky district “has turned into one big family business,” Lipatov believes. In particular, shopping arcades, public gardens, the only city bathhouse and boiler houses managed to become the property of members of this family. Kindergartens closed and became shops, and a shopping center appeared on the site of the sports and health complex, for which land was allocated.
The most egregious cases of Postrigani’s arbitrariness, according to Lipatov, were the sale of the city cinema “Mir” to Valery Postrigan at the price of a three-room apartment, as well as the transfer of the only park in the city for cottage development. In addition to the above property, Postrigan managed to sell the only city maternity hospital in 2008–2009, but later the deal was disputed and the building was returned to the city.
In addition, by the time Postrigan left his post, the mayor’s office had about 2 billion rubles in accounts payable. The city has been paying it for more than five years