The Nizhny Novgorod District Court interrogated the former director of the private security organization “Scorpion” Sergei Demidov. According to investigators, he handed over bribes to the former co-founder of the company, Vladimir Silyakov, when he worked as deputy director of the Nizhny Novgorod stadium for security. The man was charged with receiving more than 11 million rubles. bribes from a security agency and a cleaning firm. The witness said that he transferred money to the account of Vladimir Silyakov under the threat of termination of contracts and was afraid of him, because the security guard carried weapons and grenades with him, and his will was carried out by the backbone of the Scorpion, whose employees even searched the car of the deputy governor. Lawyers claim that the witness slandered their client, as well as his former business partner, presenting the distribution of proceeds from joint ventures as a bribe, and Vladimir Silyakov could not influence the contractual work in the regional directorate, of which the stadium was a branch.
In the Nizhny Novgorod District Court, the interrogation of witnesses in the criminal case of the former deputy director for security of the Nizhny Novgorod stadium, Vladimir Silyakov, began. He was accused of taking bribes for 11.3 million rubles. from a security agency and a cleaning company that serviced the stadium under contracts with the regional state institution “Directorate for holding sports and entertainment events.” The man was charged with two episodes of corruption related to receiving money from the private security organization “Scorpion” to the account of his individual entrepreneur and transferring funds from LLC “ATK 211”, which was engaged in cleaning the premises of the arena.
In the first episode of the accusation, Vladimir Silyakov, according to investigators, received over 7 million rubles. illegal remuneration from a security company in which he was formerly a co-founder and director. In the second episode, a bribe of 3 million rubles appears. The investigation believes that the defendant legalized the money through the purchase of an apartment and a parking space in the Marshal Grad residential complex, and at the time of the crimes he was an official of a state institution.
The first witness for the prosecution was Sergey Demidov, the former general director of the Scorpion private public organization. He said that he met the accused in 2019 while working as a security guard at the Respublika shopping center, and then moved to a senior position at Scorpio, whose founder and CEO was Vladimir Silyakov at the time. In December 2019, he invited him to his office and offered to take his position as director, explaining that he was leaving to work in the regional Directorate for holding sports and entertainment events. Mr. Demidov agreed, and in January 2020 he headed the agency, and in February, Vladimir Silyakov transferred his share in the company to his niece.
At the same time, the former general director retained authoritative influence in Scorpion, where former law enforcement officers close to him worked, with whom the witness periodically clashed. Disagreements with them began after Vladimir Silyakov began to demand that money be transferred to him, first to the IP account, and then using the details provided by his relative.
According to the witness, the former director of Scorpion explained this by the fact that he did not have enough salaries at a new place in a state institution.
Due to financial difficulties, these transfers were periodically delayed, so Vladimir Silyakov threatened to terminate Scorpion’s contracts with the Directorate for Sports and Entertainment Events and created problems, Sergey Demidov said.
According to his testimony, once the guards close to the former director of Scorpion searched the cars of one of the deputy governors and the head of the Directorate for holding sports and entertainment events, and Sergei Demidov himself was repeatedly not allowed to work. Several times a month, he transferred 140-450 thousand rubles to the accounts indicated to him. Witness Demidov called the total amount of transfers 7.6 million rubles.
When asked by the lawyers of the accused why Sergei Demidov did not inform the management of the Directorate for holding sports and entertainment events about extortion of bribes, the witness said that he was afraid of losing the contract for the protection of the stadium and was afraid of Vladimir Silyakov.
He allegedly carried grenades and firearms with him in his car and had extensive connections in the Russian Guard, and at one of the meetings he publicly accused the director of the state institution, Valery Mochalov, of incompetence, the witness said. At the same time, he himself was not present at this meeting, but learned about it from the words of his colleagues. However, the Directorate for holding sports and entertainment events still had complaints about the work of the PSC. After the work of Scorpio was checked by the National Guard and found license violations, he resigned from the post of general director of Scorpio.
According to Sergei Demidov, when he found out that Vladimir Silyakov had been arrested, he immediately issued a confession about the transfer of bribes to him. At the same time, the witness did not deny that he had communicated with the actual companion of the accused, Damir Khusiyanov.
Lawyers believe that the former business partner, like the witness, slandered Vladimir Silakov in this criminal case. It was initiated after the regional directorate applied to law enforcement agencies with a statement on the poor quality of cleaning services for the stadium.
According to the defendant’s defense, both partners received money under work contracts, and the division of proceeds between them cannot be interpreted as taking bribes. Moreover, Vladimir Silyakov, in his position as deputy director of the stadium – a branch of the directorate, could not influence the termination of contracts with the state customer. He pleaded not guilty to taking bribes; some of the testimony of the witness made him laugh.
The interrogation of Sergei Demidov will continue next week.
