The Basmanny District Court of Moscow sentenced the ex-head of the federal state budgetary scientific institution (FGBU) of the Russian Academy of Education (RAO) of the Institute for the Study of Childhood, Family and Education Tatyana Volosovetsfollows from case cards. According to Kommersant, she was given a suspended sentence of four years in prison.
Volosovets was found guilty of large and especially large embezzlement (part 3, part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code). According to the prosecution, she wrote out bonuses and fees for herself, using official privileges when she headed the institute (2018-2020).
The prosecutor in the debate asked for four years of real imprisonment, but the court took into account the positive characteristics of the accused and the fact that she was brought to criminal responsibility for the first time, the newspaper notes.
The court also satisfied the claim of the Institute for the Study of Childhood, Family and Education, recognized as the injured party in the case, recovering more than 4 million rubles in damages from Volosovets.
As Kommersant writes, fraud with the institute’s funds became known during a scheduled field audit of the interregional control and audit department of the Federal Treasury in August 2021. Then it was established that Volosovets had written out two large fees for herself for supposedly performed work for the institute – they amounted to the main amount of damage in the case. In the same year, she wrote herself a stimulus bonus in the amount of 82.4 thousand rubles.
In addition, becoming the director of the institute, Volosovets leased her personal BMW 420d to her own organization. Moreover, the institute rented a car to organize working trips of its director. The car will be handed over to the Federal State Budgetary Institution to pay for the damage caused.
Volosovets pleaded not guilty and stated that she had prepared all the scientific articles and works as part of the implementation of the assignments received from the Ministry of Education. According to the publication, this was confirmed by one witness from the department, but he could not explain how these works were paid, as well as the details of the agreements concluded. As for the BMW leased to the institute, the defendant explained that she used the car only for work trips, it was also available for other employees of the organization.
Volosovets in RBC comments in May, when it became known about the initiation of criminal cases against her, she acknowledged the presence of “violations of financial discipline” at the institute, but stated that she had not appropriated the money.
Volosovets was born in 1965 in Taganrog. In 1995, she defended her Ph.D. thesis in the specialty “special pedagogy” (speech therapy), then became an assistant professor at the department of speech therapy at Moscow State Pedagogical University. From 2002 to 2004 she was the head of the special education department of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. Later she worked in the structures of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia. In 2008, she headed the Institute of Psychological and Pedagogical Problems of Childhood at the Russian Academy of Education. She is also the coordinator of the “Russian-Flemish cooperation in the field of education.”
