In Rostov-on-Don, the first hearing of a criminal case against Alexander Isyuk, a resident of the village of Kushchevskaya, was held, who is accused of fraud, as well as false denunciation of members of the Tsapki gang and other people. The victims in the case were Natalya Strishnaya, the ex-wife of Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz, the “Tsapkovsky”, as well as Tsepovyaz himself, who is serving a term, but wanted to personally participate in the process. At the first interrogation, “Tsapkovsky” could not provide anything meaningful, since at the time of the conflict between Alexander Isyuk and Natalia Strishnia, he was in a colony.
The Oktyabrsky District Court of Rostov-on-Don began considering a criminal case against an entrepreneur from the village of Kushchevskaya, Krasnodar Territory, Alexander Isyuk, who, according to the prosecution, tried to embezzle the property of the family of Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz, a member of the Tsapki organized criminal group, intimidating his ex-wife Natalya Strishnyaya with criminal prosecution. Information about the beginning of the process is posted on the website of the court.
According to one of the participants in the process, voiced anonymously, Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz, who is serving a sentence for committing crimes as part of the Tsapki gang, expressed a desire to personally participate in the trial, where he has the status of a victim. The convict was transferred from a colony in the Volgograd region and placed in a pre-trial detention center in Rostov-on-Don, from where he was taken to court.
During the meeting, Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz is not in a closed room, but in the hall among the participants in the process, while he is guarded by three escorts, the handcuffs are not removed from the Tsapkovsky.
Natalya Strishnaya, also recognized as a victim, did not come to the first hearing.
The process began with the announcement of the indictment. It follows from it that in 2019 Alexander Isyuk reported false information to law enforcement agencies that the leader of the Kushchevskaya gang Sergey Tsapok, members of his group Vladimir Alekseev (Bespredel) and Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz, as well as businessman Fyodor Streltsov and Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz’s wife Natalia allegedly took away he has 70 million rubles. Two years later, the extortion case against Alexander Isyuk was dismissed due to the absence of a crime event, and the applicant himself was arrested on charges of fraud and false denunciation.
After hearing the indictment, the defendant Isyuk declared that he did not plead guilty, then the court began interrogating Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz.
The victim explained that he did not participate in the events of 2019, he knows about the situation from the words of his younger brother Andrei Tsepovyaz. After that, the judge Svetlana Gurskaya announced a break, at the next meeting the interrogation of “Tsapkovsky” will be continued.
Lawyer Georgy Labadze, representing the victims at the trial, did not comment on the events to Kommersant, redirecting the question to lawyer Murad Musaev. Mr. Musaev did not answer a phone call from Kommersant.
It is noteworthy that the encroachment on the assets of the Strishnykh-Tsepovyazov family appears in another criminal case, which is not formally connected with the process that began in Rostov. In the spring of 2021, the Investigative Committee of Russia opened a case against the beneficiaries of the Pokrovsky Concern Andrey Korovaiko and Arkady Chebanov, as well as employees of the concern and lawyers who were suspected of extorting property from Natalya Strishnya. According to investigators, representatives of Pokrovsky allegedly demanded that they transfer the rights to the Slava Kuban enterprise, intimidating the ex-wife of Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz with criminal liability for extortion from Alexander Isyuk.
The investigation believes that the perjurers involved Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz’s brother Andrei as a perjurer, who confirmed that Natalia Strishnaya, together with the Tsapkovskys, allegedly participated in the crime.
For this, according to the TFR, Andrei Tsepovyaz received a reward. Then the man retracted his testimony, saying that the representatives of Pokrovsky had allegedly intimidated him. As a result, Mr. Tsepovyaz Jr. was released from liability for false testimony, and beneficiaries and employees of the Pokrovsky Concern, in addition to extortion, were charged with the article “Bribery of a Witness”.