In Yekaterinburg, as part of an extortion case, employees of the ICR and the regional FSB conducted searches in the apartments and country house of a local entrepreneur, owner of the Akademichesky shopping center and other large assets, Alexander Gorbunov. According to investigators, attackers in 2013 took away a complex of non-residential premises from Yekaterinburg businessman Mikhail Klok, taking advantage of the fact that he was in custody. Now Mr. Klok is being accused in a murder case. Representatives of Mr. Gorbunov insist that the property in question in the criminal case was illegally seized by Klok himself, and the businessman only contributed to the return of the object to its rightful owners.
According to Kommersant’s sources, the other day, employees of the regional departments of the ICR and the FSB, accompanied by special forces, conducted searches in two apartments of Alexander Gorbunov and at his place of registration, as well as in his cottage on Rybovodov Street. The activities continued throughout the day. As a result, the security forces seized various documents and the contents of several safes. The law enforcement officers did not find the businessman himself.
The investigation department of the ICR for the Sverdlovsk region opened a criminal case, within the framework of which the searches took place, back in 2015. According to investigators, while Mikhail Klok was serving his sentence in the local colony No. 2 in the case of an organized crime group engaged in robberies and robberies, he was pressured by the administration and a number of convicts, and the man was forced to rewrite the complex of non-residential premises registered for him on Komsomolskaya street, 73, which was occupied by the trade depot LLC “Baza on Komsomolskaya”.
As a result, real estate, the value of which is estimated at about 300 million rubles, was transferred to the management of businessman Yevgeny Butsyrin.
Alexander Gorbunov’s lawyers consider the searches at his place illegal and have already appealed against them. “One of the living quarters is empty, under renovation,” lawyer Natalya Gorshenina told Kommersant. “In the other, strangers live who have nothing to do with the situation. However, they took the documents for an apartment and a telephone from a woman living there. They also took away a weapon for which my client has permission and which is not related to the criminal case. When I tried to enter the house to be searched, they did not let me in, they allowed me to enter only 20 minutes after I called 112. By that time, the search had lasted several hours. The employees brought witnesses with them, although people live nearby in the houses.”
The lawyer filed a complaint against the decision of the Leninsky District Court of Yekaterinburg, which authorized the search. In it, Ms. Gorshenina pointed out that the decision was illegal, since Alexander Gorbunov did not have any status in the criminal case and the investigation did not provide the court with any data indicating that there were grounds for the search.
As for the version of the investigation, representatives of Mr. Gorbunov consider the suspicions against him groundless. They recalled that in 2005 a criminal case was initiated on fraud (Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) – on the fact of seizing the property of Yevgeny Butsyrin – the same base on Komsomolskaya.
As the investigation established then, the complex of premises was taken away from the entrepreneur with the help of forged documents. The investigation progressed slowly and intensified only after Mikhail Klok was detained in the OPG case. The defendants in the fraud case were Klok and his accomplice, and Mr. Klok was also charged with legalizing illegally obtained property. First, during the investigation, the legalization case was dismissed, and in 2015, in court, the real estate fraud case was also dismissed at the request of Mr. Klok due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. After that, he himself announced the extortion of premises from him (part 2 of article 163 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), pointing to the alleged involvement of Alexander Gorbunov in this.
The version of the lawyers of “Kommersant” was confirmed by the son of the first owner of the property, Sergei Butsyrin. According to him, since 1989, these premises, where the state-owned enterprise for the production of doors was previously located, were owned by the Podryad-D company, founded by his father Yevgeny.
The company worked so successfully that in 2005 its owner decided to expand the business and take a loan secured by the available space. It was at this moment that Butsyrin Sr., his son said, found out that the property had already been re-registered for other persons. Suspecting his deputy director of fraud with title documents, Yevgeny Butsyrin fired him (later he was convicted of stealing bills of the Contract-D company), and also turned to law enforcement agencies.
When the fraud case was initiated, Mr. Klok, according to Butsyrin Sr., confessed to seizing the property of their family and voluntarily returned it by signing documents with the participation of a notary, but subsequently changed his position after the case was closed.
As for Mr. Gorbunov, according to Sergei Butsyrin, he came to the rescue of their business immediately after his return. During the time the property was in the use of Mr. Klok, the company owning the complex had debts to the city administration, therefore, during the bankruptcy, the property was put up for auction. It was acquired by a good friend of the family, Alexander Gorbunov, who handed over the complex to Yevgeny Butsyrin for use so that he would continue the business and be able to return the costs to the buyer at the expense of income and re-enter ownership of the property.
Representatives of Mr. Gorbunov noted that the extortion case initiated in 2015 was terminated due to the lack of corpus delicti, and then resumed again. The last time this happened was in March 2022, when Mikhail Klok was detained in a new criminal case – the murder of businessman Alexei Zubakin in Yekaterinburg in 2000.
The businessman, according to investigators, was ordered by one of his close acquaintances, and Mr. Klok helped find the perpetrator of the crime. Mikhail Klok pleaded guilty, concluded a pre-trial agreement on cooperation with the prosecutor’s office, his case is being considered in a special order.
It is interesting that the choice of a preventive measure in this case for Mr. Klok in the form of house arrest in March 2022 occurred immediately before he was recognized as a victim in a criminal case on extortion of real estate in 2013. He also filed for his own bankruptcy on the grounds that he was unable to repay the loan. During the bankruptcy proceedings, representatives of Mikhail Klok appealed to arbitration with a demand to return the complex of premises on Komsomolskaya Street to him, citing documents from the criminal case on extortion as an argument.
“The position of the investigation is surprising,” Sergey Butsyrin told Kommersant. “Law enforcement agencies, investigating the case of extortion, seem not to know what happened to our family’s property until 2013 and that a criminal case of fraud was initiated on this occasion, which was closed on non-rehabilitative grounds. Now, it turns out, it needs to be returned to those who illegally took it from us. I consider the case of extortion to be completely unfounded, especially since Alexander Gorbunov has repeatedly stated that law enforcement officers pressured him and even wrote complaints to the investigating authorities and the prosecutor’s office that the security forces demand money from him, offering to resolve the issue amicably.”