On April 11, the Smolninsky District Court of St. Petersburg began hearings on the case of taking bribes by the former director of the House of War and Labor Veterans in Pavlovsk (SPb GBSUSO DVVIT No. 1) Maxim Shcherbakov. Another defendant in the case, Alexander Bazymyansky, was sentenced on March 20 to nine and a half years in prison for a scam with the apartments of veterans of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) and residents of besieged Leningrad.
Maxim Shcherbakov was charged with taking a bribe on an especially large scale (part 6 of article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) in April 2021. According to investigators, two leaders of RossRenta LLC – Alexander Bazymyansky and Pavel Minaev – in 2014 rewarded him with the property right to an apartment worth 4 million 800 thousand rubles. for the rapid placement in a social institution of 11 elderly citizens. It is reported that the living space received was transferred and registered to one of Maxim Shcherbakov’s close relatives. The property has been seized.
The prosecution believes that representatives of a commercial company, with the assistance of Maxim Shcherbakov, placed elderly people, among whom were veterans of the Great Patriotic War and blockade survivors, in the House of War and Labor Veterans No. But in fact, the attackers sold these apartments, and took the money for themselves.
In total, from 2009 to 2019, the defendants illegally sold eight apartments worth over 26 million rubles. Mostly conscientious citizens bought housing, some even took out a mortgage for this.
Maxim Shcherbakov denies his guilt and insists that the indictment was drawn up with errors, so the arguments expressed in it have no weight. However, Alexander Bazymyansky admitted in court that he had given a bribe. At the same time, he called the sentence passed on him earlier unfair and too harsh, and the case of fraud with the apartments of old people was fabricated. Alexander Bazymyansky stated at the meeting that “he never kidnapped someone else’s and never deceived the elderly for this, but on the contrary, he duly tried to help them.” The trial is ongoing.
We add that his accomplice Pavel Minaev previously concluded a pre-trial agreement on cooperation with the investigation. In June 2021, the court appointed the former partner of Alexander Bazymyansky four years on probation, and the state prosecutor offered seven years on probation.