Vadim Lyalin exited the deal through a hole in the fence
Krasnogorsk City Court of the Moscow Region sentenced a former lawyer to 5.5 years in prison Vadim Lyalina, previously involved in many high-profile civil and criminal cases. He received a term for a scam against the co-owners of one of the largest distribution IT companies Merlion and escape from custody. Dmitry Noev, who helped him, was sentenced to three years in prison. Both were found guilty of fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), and Lyalin was also found guilty of escaping from custody (part 1 of article 313 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The defender participated in many high-profile civil and criminal cases. So, Lyalin represented the interests of the ex-wife of the football player Pavel Mamaev, Alana Mamaeva, in the property division case. In addition, he defended the ex-football player of the Russian national team Roman Shirokov, the inventor of electronic bracelets and breathalyzer Nikolai Martynov, the police chief of Domodedovo airport Maxim Titov, rapper Roma Zhigan and many others.
Vadim LyalinIn 2022, Lyalin began to defend the co-owners of Merlion Group of Companies Oleg Karchev and Alexey Abramov, now the former, and then acting co-founder of the company Vladislav Mangutov and now the ex-top manager of the company Boris Levin. All of them were arrested in October 2020 on charges of attempted murder (art. 30, part 2 of article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and intentional damage to property (part 2 of article 167 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) of the former CEO of Merlion Vyacheslav Simonenko.
Taking advantage of the fact that the entrepreneurs were in a pre-trial detention center, Vadim Lyalin convinced the heads of four companies of their holding that the investigation plans to seize the property of the companies. He stated that he allegedly learned about this from his acquaintances in law enforcement agencies. In order to “prevent” this, Lyalin and his friend Dmitry Noev suggested that the CEOs of Citilink LLC, Tegrus LLC, Verisel-Trading LLC and Haskel LLC conclude agreements on the provision of legal services to them by the legal company Logos controlled by him. . In fact, the defender did not plan to fulfill any obligations, and he decided to steal the money received under the guise of paying for legal services, the case materials say.
Within three months from November 2020 to February 2021, 7.5 million rubles were transferred to the accounts of UC Logos LLC for legal services that no one provided. A few months later, the co-owners of Merlion were released and their case was dismissed. Vyacheslav Symonenko, on the contrary, in February 2022, he himself became a defendant for falsifying evidence (Article 303 of the Criminal Code) and knowingly giving false testimony (Article 307) against former business partners. He was arrested. Later, he was charged with giving a bribe (Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), knowingly false denunciation (Article 306 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and participation in a criminal community (Part 2 of Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
Vadim Lyalin was detained on April 15, 2022 at the request of the leaders of Merlion, and the next day the Basmanny Court sent him to a pre-trial detention center. Five months later, on September 2, 2022, FSB officers brought the lawyer from the detention center to his home, in the village of Gorodishche, in the settlement of Voskresenskoye in Moscow, to conduct investigative actions. There, the lawyer escaped from the guards, quietly leaving the house through the garage gate that overlooked the territory of the HOA “Russian Field”, and from there he disappeared through a hole in the fence.
Over the next two days, he was moving in the direction of the Smolensk region on various vehicles, planning to leave from there to Minsk (Belarus), and then illegally move to Poland. However, near the village of Buda, Krasninsky district, Smolensk region, on September 4, 2022, FSB officers detained him at a gas station and returned him to the pre-trial detention center.
During the investigation, Vadim Lyalin, who was deprived of the status of a lawyer on March 24, 2022, pleaded guilty and entered into a pre-trial agreement with the investigation on cooperation, a significant part of which he fulfilled. He even made amends to the victims. However, after the escape, the prosecutor’s office terminated the deal with him. The court considered his case in a general manner, appointing 5.5 years in a general regime colony.
In court, Lyalin repented of his deed and stated that he had escaped from custody, as he became emotional after meeting with close relatives in the house.
Dmitry Noev also did not deny his guilt. During the investigation and trial, he was under house arrest. He was given a term of three years in a penal colony, taking him into custody in the courtroom. The court also imposed fines of 300,000 rubles on both defendants.
The representative of Merlion Group, lawyer Georgy Pospelov, said that he and his principals, co-owners of the company, consider the verdict legal and reasonable, given all the circumstances of the case. The lawyer told Business FM that Lyalin helped in the implementation of the plan of the criminal community, created by the “fixer” Vitaly Kachur and his son, ex-employee of the Investigative Committee Kirill Kachur. The latter was arrested in absentia in January 2022 for embezzling 3 million euros from entrepreneurs and extorting a bribe in the amount of 1.6 million dollars.
“Investigation of the main criminal case on the activities of the OPS, created Vitaly Kachur and Kirill Kachur, which included former employees of the investigative departments of Moscow and the Moscow Region, a former employee of the Central Office of the Russian Investigative Committee and other persons, it was reliably established that after the lawyer Vadim Lyalin accepted an order to protect the owners of Merlion and top manager Boris Levin in a fabricated criminal case, Vitaly Kachur immediately attracted him to the commission of a crime,” Georgy Pospelov said. – Lyalin was personally acquainted with him and agreed to act as an intermediary for a monetary reward to reach an agreement on the receipt of bribes by members of the criminal community from his clients for changing their preventive measure and stopping their criminal prosecution. Fulfilling his criminal role, during meetings with Karchev, Mangutov and Abramov in the pre-trial detention center, he convinced them that in order to change their preventive measure and stop their criminal prosecution, they need to conclude a pre-trial agreement on cooperation and slander themselves in committing a particularly serious crime (organization attempted murder of former Merlion top manager Vyacheslav Simonenko), which no one committed at all.
According to the Kommersant newspaper, for not bringing businessmen to criminal responsibility, the OPS planned to receive 15 billion rubles from the co-owners of Merlion.
Despite the lenientness of the sentence, Vadim Lyalin appealed against it, considering it to be excessively harsh. The appeal of the defense states that the verdict was issued without taking into account the identity of the former well-known lawyer. “According to the defense, the court, when passing the verdict, did not take into account the contribution of Vadim Lyalin, marked by state and departmental awards, to strengthening law and order in the Russian Federation, his merits in advocacy, participation in charity, in the military-patriotic education of youth, and the provision of humanitarian assistance to the civilian population LPR and DPR, as well as the fact that he is the only breadwinner in the family, ”said Georgy Pospelov.
Vadim Lyalin’s lawyer Alexander Larionov told Business FM that he would not comment on the case.
