As it became known to Kommersant, the Oktyabrsky Court of St. Petersburg dismissed the case against Vasily Vasin, the owner of the once large IT supplier of the Pension Fund of Russia and the Moscow City Hall – Redsys. According to the initial version of the investigation, businessman and company lawyer Victoria Golovkina hid money from the tax authorities in 2019, which should have been used to pay off tax arrears. The underpayment itself at the first stage of the investigation was estimated at more than 40 million rubles, but in the end its size decreased to 7.2 million rubles. The company paid this money a long time ago, however, on this basis, the court agreed to close the case only after the recently adopted relevant amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation. The persecution of Mrs. Golovkina was terminated last year due to the absence of corpus delicti in her actions.
At the trial in the Oktyabrsky District Court of St. Petersburg, the lawyers of the entrepreneur proposed to terminate the case against Vasily Vasin on the basis of amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure that came into force at the end of March (in particular, payment of arrears is now considered the basis for closing the tax case). In turn, when discussing this issue, the court invited the defense to consider another option: to close the case due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. Lawyers and the defendant himself expectedly opposed this option, drawing the attention of the St. Petersburg court to the fact that the arrears, which appear in the case file, were paid by Mr. Vasin’s company back in 2019. And this circumstance is fully consistent with the amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Representatives of the state prosecution and the Federal Tax Service, which was recognized as the injured party in the case, according to Kommersant, did not object to the offer of protection, but gave the court a choice of reasons for the decision to stop the criminal prosecution of the businessman.
As a result, the district court listened to the arguments of the lawyers and closed the case, referring to the new paragraph of Part 1 of Art. 24 Code of Criminal Procedure. At the same time, Vasily Vasin was also lifted of the restrictions related to the undertaking not to leave, under which he was.
The businessman’s lawyer Alexei Kirsanov told Kommersant that he was satisfied with the court’s decision, describing it as “legal and motivated.”
The criminal prosecution of another defendant in the case, the former head of the legal department of Redsys, Victoria Golovkina, was terminated last year. As her lawyer Anton Gostev told Kommersant, the reason for this decision was the absence of corpus delicti in Ms. Golovkina’s actions.
Recall that Vasily Vasin and Victoria Golovkina were accused by the Investigative Committee of Russia of concealing the company’s funds, which it was obliged to use to pay off tax arrears (part 2 of article 199.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The events described in the case file took place in 2019. Initially, the amount of arrears indicated in the investigation materials was 43.8 million rubles, but then it became less and less, and as a result, the damage was estimated at more than 7.2 million rubles. It is interesting that at the first stage of the investigation, the case file contained very sonorous language: it, in particular, said that the actions of the accused pose an “increased public danger”, and they themselves deliberately did not fulfill the “constitutional duty of every citizen of the Russian Federation” and caused damage to the interests ” budgetary system of the Russian Federation.
As stated in the case file, by the end of June 2019, the total debt of Redsys for VAT, income tax, payments to the Pension Fund and other various obligations exceeded 163.4 million rubles.
As a result, the company’s accounts were blocked. However, its owner, due to “careerism motives” and “wishing to improve the financial and economic condition” of his company, the case said, decided to hide part of the money, giving the order to conduct settlements using the accounts of the KSM IT company controlled by him. It is interesting that among the payments that appear as evidence of a crime, there are also those related to paying for Internet services, buying coffee and milk for employees, electrical tape for the office, wires for a computer in the amount of several hundred rubles, etc.
It is worth noting that Mr. Vasin’s company, along with Technoserv, was at one time a major IT supplier to the Pension Fund of Russia. In particular, Redsys supplied computer equipment, data storage systems, server and network equipment, etc. The rise of the company, whose annual contracts with PFR alone amounted to 5–6 billion rubles, was associated with the close relationship between the entrepreneur and the then co-owners of Promsvyazbank and IT- Technoserv company Alexey and Dmitry Ananiev. Meanwhile, we recall that now the Presnensky Court of the capital is considering a criminal case against several former top managers of the PFR. According to investigators, they received multimillion-dollar kickbacks from companies owned by Alexei Ananiev, providing these firms with billions of dollars in contracts for the supply of computer equipment for the needs of the FIU. However, law enforcement agencies did not have similar claims against the owner of Redsys Vasily Vasin.