As it became known to Kommersant, for two and a half years the military investigation has been dealing with a particularly large bribe, of which Alexander Morin, who served as deputy chief military prosecutor of Russia, head of the Ministry of Justice department for the Central Federal District and general director of the Main Military Construction Directorate No. 7 of the Ministry of Defense, is suspected of receiving. The other day, Morin once again tried to get the Moscow City Court to return the property arrested in the framework of a criminal case, but again failed. The court explained its refusal by the fact that all the arguments of the retired lieutenant-general of justice “in no way shake” the correctness of the decision to arrest his property.
This year, retired Lieutenant General of Justice Alexander Morin has become a regular visitor to the Moscow City Court. There he is trying to appeal the decisions of the Khamovnichesky District Court, which first seized his property as part of a criminal case on corruption, and then regularly extended the terms of arrest.
General Morin’s latest complaint concerned real estate – a house, land and several non-residential premises, left under arrest until June “to secure a verdict in part of a civil claim or a fine.”
Alexander Morin tried to prove to the Moscow City Court that the property was arrested unreasonably and illegally, since he acquired all the plots and premises 18 years ago, when he served as head of the Ministry of Justice department for the Central Federal District. These transactions were once checked by the Prosecutor General’s Office and did not find any crime in them. And even today, the military investigation, according to Morin, also failed to provide the court with any convincing evidence of the imaginary nature of these acquisitions.
The Moscow City Court, however, sided with the court of first instance. The complainant was told that all his arguments “in no way shake the correctness of the district court’s conclusions”, and the arguments about the need to remove the arrest from the property are untenable, since “they contradict what has already been stated above.”
It should be noted that two months earlier, Lieutenant-General Morin tried to remove from under the encumbrance of another object arrested in the framework of a criminal case – a Moscow apartment belonging to his brother’s wife. The lawyer of the ex-official, Vladimir Lytkin, explained in the appellate court that the apartment could not become “material support” for the criminal case on a bribe, since it was not bought by the accused with the funds acquired as a result of criminal acts, and does not belong to him at all.
The owner of the property, according to the lawyer, acquired it as a result of the assignment of the right provided for by the marriage contract with her husband, so in any case, it will not work to confiscate the property in the framework of the corruption criminal case of Alexander Morin.
The Moscow City Court, however, even then did not support the former military prosecutor and his lawyer. Recognizing the owner’s ownership of the apartment, the court noted that the dwelling itself “was used to commit criminal acts” and received “improvements inseparable from it” as a result of these actions. The decision notes that no one is evicting the landlady from her apartment during the investigation, but she will have to wait with the sale of her property until a final decision on the criminal case is made.
I must say that until the fall of 2020, the career of the 63-year-old official and manager Morin developed quite well. In 2000, he took the post of deputy chief military prosecutor of Russia, and three years later, with the rank of lieutenant general of justice, he moved to the post of head of the department of the Ministry of Justice of Russia for the Central Federal District. In the spring of 2014, the military lawyer headed the then largest specialized federal state unitary enterprise of the Federal Agency for Special Construction “Main Directorate for the Construction of Roads and Airfields”, and after the reorganization of Spetsstroy, a similar structure under the Ministry of Defense – the Main Military Construction Directorate No. 7 (GVSU-7).
Morin’s military construction career as a lawyer was not so successful: the manager became a defendant in several administrative cases concerning non-payment of salaries and late payments to suppliers as part of the implementation of the state defense order.
However, the really serious problems for Alexander Morin began in September 2020, after one of his subordinates wrote to the Ministry of Defense a complaint about alleged abuses committed by the boss.
According to the applicant, in 2017 the partner construction company GVSU-7 overhauled a Moscow apartment that belonged to the brother of the director of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Morin and his wife. Walls were leveled in the dwelling, ceilings were painted, wallpaper was glued, bathrooms were tiled and flooring was laid. For the “apartment” work performed, the director of the company allegedly received from the general director of GVSU-7 Morin significant preferences in the distribution of subcontracts related to construction work as part of the state defense order.
The complaint put an end to the further career of a military builder – Mr. Morin was removed from his post and dismissed by order of the State Secretary of the Ministry of Defense in charge of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise. Three months later, the retiree also became a defendant in a criminal case initiated by the Main Military Investigation Department. The investigation charges the general with receiving a particularly large bribe in the form of property and abuse of official powers in the execution of the state defense order for personal gain (part 6 of article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and part 1 of article 285.4 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). It is not yet clear when the investigation will end. Recently, the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, extended the period of preliminary investigation in this case to 30 months.
