The Meshchansky district court of the capital began on Friday to consider in absentia a criminal case against the former vice-president of the Vim-Avia airline, Alevtina Kalashnikova. She is accused of abuse of power, transferring currency to non-residents of the Russian Federation using false documents and illegally obtaining a loan. Ms. Kalashnikova herself, as well as two other main defendants in this case – the former co-owners of VIM-Avia, the spouses Rashid and Svetlana Mursekaev, who are on the wanted list, have been living in the UK for several years.
The criminal case on fraud in the Vim-Avia Airlines was initiated by the Moscow Interregional Investigation Department on Transport of the Investigative Committee of Russia (TFR) on September 25, 2017, and two days later it was transferred to the Main Investigative Directorate of the TFR. The reason for the intervention of law enforcement agencies was initially numerous delays in international and domestic flights of the airline, followed by the announcement of the termination of flights due to financial problems. At the end of October 2017, the Federal Air Transport Agency suspended the air carrier’s air operator certificate, which gives the right to operate flights. A year later, the company was declared bankrupt.
The defendants in this case, in addition to Alevtina Kalashnikova, are the former general director of VIM-Avia Alexander Kochnev, accountant Ekaterina Panteleeva, as well as co-owners of the airline Rashid and Svetlana Mursekaev. All of them were charged with abuse of power, transferring currency to non-residents of the Russian Federation using forged documents and illegally obtaining a loan (part 2 of article 201, part 3 of article 193.1 and part 1 of article 176 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Only Messrs. Kochnev and Panteleeva were available for investigation, whom in June 2021 the Meshchansky District Court of the capital sentenced to three years and eight months and three and a half years, respectively. And since the defendants managed to serve these terms under arrest in a pre-trial detention center, they were released right in the courtroom.
The main defendants in the case now live in the UK. And Alevtina Kalashnikova flew to Turkey just a few hours before the search was carried out at her place.
In December 2017, she was put on the international wanted list. At the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office for the extradition of Ms. Kalashnikova, the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London refused.
As a result, the Meshchansky District Court began to consider the criminal case against her in absentia. As follows from the case file, with the help of Alexander Kochnev and Ekaterina Panteleeva, the owners of VIM-Avia gradually turned it into a kind of financial pyramid. So, in 2015-2017, they falsified reporting in order to receive loans that were withdrawn from VIM-Avia to the accounts of foreign companies under fictitious contracts. In particular, in this way in 2016 they stole about 1.6 billion rubles, which the airline received from Absolut Bank for the purchase of aircraft engines. The loan was never returned, but at the same time, more than $9 million under fictitious contracts for the sale of aviation equipment ended up on the account of an Irish company affiliated with the Mursekaevs. From there they migrated to one of the Luxembourg banks.
In addition, the investigators found that VIM-Avia purchased jet fuel at inflated prices from affiliated structures.
In the end, all these frauds led to the fact that by September 2017, the company’s losses exceeded 2.5 billion rubles. and she ceased to exist.
It should be noted that as part of the investigation of a separate criminal case against Alevtina Kalashnikova, at the request of the investigation, in January 2018, the Basmanny District Court of Moscow seized the property of her ex-husband, the owner of Derzhava Bank, Sergei Yentz. 19 real estate objects (mainly land plots in the Odintsovsky and Mozhaysky districts of the Moscow region) worth about 157 million rubles fell under the burden.
The TFR believes that Kalashnikova, the former vice-president of VIM-Avia, deliberately registered the real estate acquired with illegally obtained funds for her husband in order to avoid her arrest.
The investigation considers the divorce of the spouses to be fictitious, since from 2001 to 2017, until the flight of the top manager abroad, they lived in the same apartment with their children. In the event of a conviction, the assets will be used to pay off the damages.
Alevtina Kalashnikova’s lawyer told Kommersant that he was not ready to comment on the charges against her without the consent of her client.
