“Kommersant” became aware of the conflict around the ice “Reutov Arena” in the suburbs, which involved its owners, management, law enforcement, supervisory and judicial authorities. According to the statements of the owners, who suspected the general director of the arena of abuse, the police began checks, but the prosecutor’s office, despite the court decision, considered that it was only about civil law relations, and did not give a course to the investigation.
The cause of the conflict was the events in the Reutov Arena, built a few years ago, an ice complex where you can practice not only various sports, but also, for example, choreography. The youth team of the Ice Hockey Federation of the Moscow Region “Buran Reutov” is also based on the arena.
The complex was built on a plot of land leased by a company run by a local entrepreneur, Sergei Arbuzov. He attracted five co-investors to the construction, who together with him bought the land and eventually became the owners of the Reutov Arena. To solve operational issues, a management company LLC Reutov Arena was created, headed by Gennady Lapynin.
The profit was supposed to be distributed among the owners of the arena, however, according to Sergey Arbuzov, he, along with partners, suspected that the general director of the sports complex could hide part of the money from the owners, including receiving it from tenants in cash.
The co-founders wrote a collective statement to the regional Ministry of Internal Affairs, asking to check Mr. Lapynin for involvement in fraud (Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), embezzlement of entrusted funds (Art. 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), causing property damage (Art. 165 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and commercial bribery (Art. 204 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). In the latter case, it was about the possible receipt of illegal rewards from the management of the Ice Hockey and Figure Skating Center located at the arena (Ice PRO LLC).
The police refused to open a criminal case “due to the lack of corpus delicti”, but Deputy Prosecutor Reutov canceled this decision, ordering a deeper check with a questioning of all the actors. Operatives confiscated accounting documents and reports in the arena, several million rubles in cash, notebooks with entries similar to black bookkeeping, and so on, but now prosecutor Reutova Elena Matveeva canceled the decision of her deputy, indicating that the materials of the first check “contain enough data confirming that civil law relations have developed between the parties to the conflict, the solution of which is not within the competence of law enforcement agencies.
After that, the police returned everything seized. Mr. Arbuzov’s lawyer, Maxim Vodyanitsky, appealed the decision to the prosecutor’s office of the Moscow Region, which also found no violations. Then the defender appealed to the Reutov court with a complaint about the inaction of law enforcement officers (Article 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation) and, which happens quite rarely in practice, won.
“The court recognized that the check was carried out incompletely, canceling the refusal to initiate a criminal case and listing on four sheets all the shortcomings that need to be eliminated,” Mr. Vodyanitsky explained.
He specifically noted that the prosecutor’s office tried to challenge this decision in the Moscow Regional Court, but the appellate instance also supported the position of Sergei Arbuzov. As a result, another check was carried out, as a result of which a “rejected” decision was issued, which representatives of the arena owners appealed not only to the supervisory authorities of the Moscow Region, but also to the Prosecutor General’s Office, believing that at the local level there was “lobbying the interests of persons against whom written statement.”
The prosecutor’s office of the Moscow region confirmed to Kommersant that they do not see the need to take prosecutorial response measures in this story. Gennady Lapynin did not want to discuss his conflict with the owners over the phone, citing the fact that he was “a very scrupulous person”, and did not answer questions sent by e-mail.