Vyacheslav Sheyanov, the former vice-president of the SOK group of companies, was arrested in absentia for an international search. Earlier, in a criminal case on embezzlement, the ex-general director of the Federal Passenger Company (FPC) Mikhail Akulov and the head of the SVZhD Mekhpachechnaya LLC Andrey Voronin were actually taken into custody.
The decision to arrest Vyacheslav Sheyanov in absentia was made by the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow, which granted the corresponding request from the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In accordance with it, an entrepreneur will be sent to a pre-trial detention center for two months if he is caught in Russia or extradited from abroad. Mr. Sheyanov has already been put on the international wanted list, and a court decision is needed for Interpol to take part in it.
On April 11, 2019, the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened a criminal case on the fact of embezzlement of funds from Russian Railways. Initially, the materials of the investigation spoke of attempted fraud involving deliberate non-fulfillment of contractual obligations in the field of entrepreneurial activity on an especially large scale (part 3 of article 30, part 7 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), as well as abuse of power (art. 201 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
As it was established during the preliminary investigation, in 2008, the former vice-president of the SOK group of companies Vyacheslav Sheyanov, while still the founder and head of Region-Finance LLC, decided to create an organized criminal group in Moscow and Yekaterinburg for the systematic embezzlement of funds of subsidiaries of Russian Railways. Region-Finance, Mr. Sheyanov, by this time already owned Laundry Circum-Baikal Railway, Laundry Far Eastern Railway, and Laundry YuUZhD LLC, the main activity of which was the provision of Russian Railways services for staffing passenger cars of long-distance trains with removable linen. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Mr. Sheyanov decided to create another LLC – this time “Laundry SVZhD”, which would be based in Yekaterinburg, providing similar services.
To do this, Mr. Sheyanov, according to the investigation, entered into a criminal conspiracy with his acquaintance Andrey Voronin, who was later made the general director of the SVZhD MekhLaundry LLC, and Mikhail Akulov, who at that time held the position of vice president of Russian Railways. The latter created favorable conditions for criminal activity.
In 2010, Mr. Voronin entered into a contract with LLC without any tenders, upon execution of which it received not only discounts from FPC, but also 1.4 billion rubles. from the Ural and South Ural branches of the company. Two years later, when the FPC employees suggested that Mikhail Akulov terminate the contract with the Laundry Service of the Northern Railways due to complaints from passengers, he, on the contrary, once again invested in its development. This time, 289.7 million rubles were allocated. for the construction of a new building with an area of 2.2 thousand square meters. m for laundry.
The building was never erected, and in 2016 Mr. Akulov was retired. An examination appointed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs established that Russian Railways, through cooperation with the Laundry Service of the Northern Railways, caused damage of at least 330 million 500 thousand rubles.
Mikhail Akulov was detained by the police on January 31 of this year, and on February 7, Andrey Voronin. Both were arrested by the Meshchansky District Court on charges of especially large embezzlement (part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Having apparently learned about this, Mr. Sheyanov fled abroad, so he was charged in absentia with the same crime. Kommersant failed to get comments from representatives of his defense.
