Uralchem asked Pertsev to ToAZ
The new management of Togliattiazot, consisting of people from UCC Uralchem, has decided not yet to terminate the employment relationship with ex-policeman Alexander Pertsev, who is involved in a criminal case of planting weapons on the territory of the plant.
Because of this, the leadership of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Samara Region dismissed Major Pertsev from the bodies under the article. After the transition of TOAZ under the control of Uralchem, Alexander Pertsev was hired by the security service of the enterprise. This week, it became known about another criminal case in which a new employee of the security service of TOAZ was considered a suspect. The company does not deny the employment of the former policeman, but does not comment on the situation.
The leadership of Togliattiazot (TOAZ) has not yet begun to dismiss the former police officer Alexander Pertsev from the security service (SB) of the plant, despite the fact that the latter was a defendant in criminal cases related to the plant, and was also dismissed from the internal affairs bodies in disgrace. Alexander Pertsev became an employee of TOAZ after the November meeting of the company’s shareholders, following which Uralchem’s managers came to the management of the plant. This week it became known that the former detective of the Center for Combating Extremism was a suspect in another criminal case.
The fact that Major Pertsev was involved in a high-profile investigation first became known in the summer of 2018. In January of the same year, the FSB arrested Boris Berezovsky’s former head of security Sergei Sokolov, Ruslan Milchenko, head of the Analytics and Business information center, Oleg Antoshin, ex-head of the Togliattiazot security service, and his deputy Alexei Alekseev. All of them were involved in the case of planting weapons and explosives on the territory of TOAZ in the winter of 2017. During interrogations, the attackers said that they acted in the interests of a certain financial and industrial group that had plans for the enterprise, and the weapons were planted in order to discredit the then management of the plant.
Even then, the investigation assumed that the Sokolov group could not carry out the plan without the participation of the Samara security officials, and the local FSB department began to actively identify them. The senior detective of the Center for Combating Extremism of the Main Internal Affairs Directorate of the Samara Region, Alexander Pertsev, then came to the attention of FSB operatives. Sergei Sokolov, Ruslan Milchenko and Oleg Antoshin testified during interrogations that Major Pertsev was used to implement the plan to plant weapons, for which they handed him a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Later, all the defendants in this criminal case received real terms of imprisonment, and in relation to Alexander Pertsev, a pre-investigation check was carried out on the fact of illegal arms trafficking. The Kalashnikov assault rifle was never found, Alexander Pertsev managed to avoid criminal liability, but he was fired from the police for committing an offense discrediting the honor of a law enforcement officer.
“Kommersant”, 01/21/2019, “The planted weapon led to a purge in the police”: the FSB suggests that in addition to Alexander Pertsev, other Samara police officers may be involved in this high-profile crime. Thus, another former CPE employee, Artem Illarionov, who resigned from the internal affairs bodies in the summer of last year, appears in the case. The latter came to the attention of the security forces when, in May 2018, together with Alexander Pertsev, he tried to help Vyacheslav Trikoz, who was on the federal wanted list on suspicion of extortion, avoid detention. The list also included the former head of the CPE, now the deputy chief of police for operational work of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Samara Region, Alexei Maksimov. It was Colonel Maksimov who in November last year, after the start of the trial against Vyacheslav Trikoz, wrote an appeal addressed to the chairman of the Avtozavodsky District Court Boris Nikolaev, in which he indicated that Vyacheslav Trikoz helped the Samara police in solving crimes, and asked to take this fact into account when sentencing (as a result, Vyacheslav Trikoz received four years in a strict regime colony under the extortion article). Immediately after it became known about this appeal, the head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate for the Samara Region initiated an internal check against the subordinate, and employees of the internal security department from the central office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were sent to the region. The FSB suspects that the activity of the police in the case of Vyacheslav Trikoz could have been caused by fears that he would testify in the case of the discovery of a cache on the territory of TOAZ. According to Kommersant’s information, new criminal cases may be initiated based on the results of the audit. The Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Samara Region did not deny the fact of inspections, but declined to comment. – Inset K.ru
This week it became known that Major Pertsev was a suspect, but in a different criminal case. On July 26, 2018, the Investigative Committee of the ICR for the Samara Region opened a criminal case (No. 11802360026000058) on the fact of abuse of power by police officers (part 1 of article 286).
During the investigation of the criminal case on the fact of planting weapons on the territory of TOAZ, the former head of the security service of this enterprise, Oleg Antoshin, as well as Sergey Sokolov and Ruslan Milchenko, testified that they had transferred 1.5 million rubles to Alexander Pertsev. to organize wiretapping of the then management of the plant. According to investigators, the police major fraudulently obtained a court decision to listen in on the conversations of TOAZ General Director Vyacheslav Suslov (he held this post in 2015-2019. – Kommersant-Volga), as well as business partners of the plant from Turkey. According to the testimony of Oleg Antoshin, he listened to conversations in Togliatti in the office of Alexander Pertsev on the street. 50 years of October, 53b (this building houses the Center for Combating Extremism. – “Kommersant-Volga”). Oleg Antoshin confirmed his testimony during the confrontation with Alexander Pertsev. In August 2019, the case materials were requested by the Main Directorate for the Investigation of Particularly Important Cases of the RF IC. The case, which was handled by the senior investigator for especially important cases of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Major General Mikhail Tumanov, was suspended, but its closure was not reported. Major General Tumanov first came to the attention of the media during a high-profile trial in the case against the beneficiaries of PJSC TOAZ. This criminal case on charges of fraud against Vladimir and Sergey Makhlaev, as well as their foreign partners, was initiated at the request of Uralchem. The hearings were held from the winter of 2018 to the summer of 2019 in the Komsomolsky District Court of Togliatti. All the defendants were sentenced in absentia to lengthy prison terms. At one of the meetings, Togliattiazot’s lawyer Denis Simachev told the court that Major General Mikhail Tumanov, senior investigator for especially important cases of the RF Investigative Committee, allegedly offered his colleague cooperation, according to which the lawyer was to become an informer of the investigator, talking about defense plans. The lawyer refused such an offer, after which Mikhail Tumanov allegedly “threatened with trouble, especially expressing a desire to initiate a criminal case against Simachev personally at all costs, who interferes with the investigation.”
It was not possible to get comments from Alexander Pertsev, who has been an employee of the Security Service of TOAZ from the beginning of December of this year to the present.
Representatives of Togliattiazot did not deny the fact of concluding an employment contract with the ex-policeman, but did not comment on the situation. The Investigative Committee of the ICR for the Samara Region could not clarify at what stage the investigation of the criminal case on the fact of abuse of power by a police officer, the suspect in which Alexander Pertsev was held, was at.