The Moscow City Court declared illegal the decision of the Basmanny Court of the capital, which limited the time for familiarization with the materials of the case of the chairman of the board of directors of BKF Bank, the founder of the Russian Product company, Olga Mirimskaya, who is accused of giving bribes. Earlier, a similar decision was made by the appellate court in relation to the investigator Yury Nosov, who was with her in the case. The Supreme Court ordered the issue to be re-examined.
In the Moscow City Court, the defense of Olga Mirimskaya appealed the decision of the Basmanny Court of the capital of December 27, 2022. Then the court, at the request of the Investigative Committee of Russia, limited the time for the accused and her lawyers to familiarize themselves with the case materials until February 17, 2023, deciding that she was dragging out the procedure.
At the same time, Andrei Veniaminov, an investigator for especially important cases of the TFR, asked for a restriction until January 31, 2023. Then he stated that the arrested woman was regularly presented with materials for study on working days since November 21, 2022, that is, since the end of the investigative actions in her case. However, Mirimskaya read only 10 volumes out of 115 volumes, without even starting to get acquainted with material evidence.
To this, the lawyers objected that only 25 working days had passed since the end of the investigative actions, of which the investigator brought the volumes of their client to the pre-trial detention center for only nine days, during which he gave her those same 10 volumes. No other materials were brought to her, and there is no evidence that she refused to study them.
“A new unit of measurement of electronic information”
The Prosecutor General’s Office did not support the investigation’s petition and requested that it be rejected. This happened after the investigator did not want to answer Judge Valentina Levashova’s question about the specific volume of material evidence, and stated that he would only answer a written request from the court. When the representative of the prosecutor’s office proposed to interrupt the hearing and send such a request, the investigator said that he would not answer him. However, the judge partially granted the request of the investigation.
In the appeal, three defenders of Olga Mirimskaya insisted on the cancellation of the decision as illegal. So, her lawyer, Alexander Chernov, noted that the investigator did not disclose the volume of material evidence and “introduced a new unit for measuring electronic information -” a box “, categorically refusing to indicate its size.”
Another defender of Mirimskaya German Uskov noted that on average one volume contains 241 pages and, based on the logic of the court, his client had to finish reading the case in 204 hours, spending on average only two and a half minutes per page out of more than 25 thousand .
In the Moscow City Court, the Prosecutor General’s Office took a different position – its representative asked to leave the decision of the court of first instance unchanged. But judge Olga Kazakova canceled the judicial act, returning the petition of the investigation for a new consideration.
A similar decision was made on February 20 by another judge of the Moscow City Court, Svetlana Aleksandrova, who, on the basis of a complaint by lawyer Ruslan Zakalyuzhny, overturned the decision of the same Basmanny court to restrict access to the materials of the case of his client, investigator Yuri Nosov, located near Moscow.
He and Olga Mirimskaya were arrested in December 2021. The banker was accused of giving bribes (part 5 of article 291 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) to Nosov, who was in charge of the case of the kidnapping of her newborn daughter Sophia in order for him to investigate the case in her favor. The investigation considers two cars to be the subjects of a bribe – a used Honda-CR-V worth 1.2 million rubles and a Mitsubishi Outlander SUV worth 2 million rubles. Nosov was charged with taking a bribe on an especially large scale (part 6 of article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The defendants deny guilt. Mirimskaya claims that her former cohabitant Nikolai Smirnov, co-owner of the Golden Crown payment system, and her ex-husband Alexei Golubovich are behind the initiation of the case. Both of her statements are not commented on. According to the case file, the last owner of the Mitsubishi Outlander is Vadim Bagaturia, a lawyer for Nikolai Smirnov, former roommate of Mirimskaya. The latter was previously accused of kidnapping her newborn daughter. The lawyer bought a car that became evidence. The criminal case against Nikolai Smirnov was terminated on 07/12/2020 due to the absence of corpus delicti in his actions, and he was rehabilitated.
In addition, Mirimskaya (in 2015, Forbes magazine placed her in 22nd place in the list of the richest women in Russia) is charged with three episodes of attempt (part 3 of article 30, part 5 of article 291 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) to pay bribes in the amount of 1.7 million dollars (550, 500 and 700 thousand dollars) to unidentified employees of the Presnensky Court of Moscow and the 9th Arbitration Court of Appeal in property disputes with her ex-husband. The banker claims that she is being slandered. As part of the case, her property worth more than 2 billion rubles was arrested.
Family contract
Two episodes of her accusation were based on the testimony of Ivan Kibalchich, the husband of a former employee of the banker, the former head of the legal department of Russian Product OJSC Ekaterina Kibalchich (nee Seryakova).
Mirimskaya filed an application for both with the Ministry of Internal Affairs back in 2017, accusing her of embezzling 550 thousand dollars, which, according to the applicant’s testimony, she paid Seryakova and Kibalchich in 2015 for a range of legal services as part of the case in the Presnensky Court of Moscow. There, she shared jointly acquired property (a house and land plots on Nikolina Gora, which were estimated at 600 million rubles) with her first husband, former Yukos top manager Alexei Golubovich. However, the court did not decide the way the banker wanted (he divided the property in equal shares, although each of the plaintiffs demanded that the house be transferred to him), and Seryakova and Kibalchich refused to return her fee of 550 thousand dollars.
Seryakova was never prosecuted. She is a witness in the Mirimskaya case. And her husband was arrested in July 2022, charged with fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Already in October, he made a deal with the investigation, saying that the money was allegedly intended for the judges of the Presnensky Court in Moscow. The man claimed that he eventually returned them to Mirimskaya (she herself categorically denies this).
In addition, Kibalchich testified that in 2014, through a former employee of the Russian Bailiff Service Alexei Chevelashvili (left for Spain), he tried to bribe the judges of the 9th Arbitration Court of Appeal in the amount of 700 thousand dollars. According to him, Mirimskaya allegedly allocated the money to cancel the decision of the Moscow arbitration on the transfer to her husband of an old mansion in the city center, on Bolshaya Polyanka Street, worth several million dollars. Chevelashvili claimed that he returned the money to Mirimskaya.
Fear for life
The case on Kibalchich’s charge of especially large-scale fraud (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – up to 10 years in prison) in the amount of 550 thousand dollars was separated into a separate proceeding and sent to the Presnensky Court of Moscow, which on January 21 began to consider it in special order. In this case, the defendant fully agrees with the charge, and the process takes place in a simplified form, without examining the evidence. The court does not have the right to appoint the defendant more than two-thirds of the maximum possible term.
Olga Mirimskaya petitioned to join this process as a victim and to terminate the special procedure for considering the case. However, judge Elena Abramova (known for having sentenced the actor Mikhail Efremov) rejected the request.
In this regard, Mirimskaya’s lawyers on February 21 re-sent a similar petition to the court. In the appeal, a copy of which is at the disposal of Business FM, the banker emphasizes that the defendant has not complied with the terms of the pre-trial cooperation agreement and is actually covering for his wife. Mirimskaya calls the latter “an accomplice to the crime”, who not only took an active part in it, “but moreover, without her participation, the commission of this crime would have been impossible.” Mirimskaya points out that she trusted a woman who had been a lawyer for the Russian Product society for 10 years, was a friend of her son for some time and lived with him. It was Seryakova, the banker believes, who was “actually the coordinator and manager of the trial” for the division of property between her and Golubovich. “I believe that Ekaterina Kibalchich (Seryakova) was the organizer of the theft of funds in the amount of 550 thousand US dollars, which is confirmed by her e-mails,” Mirimskaya said in her petition.
According to her, Seryakova introduced Kibalchich “as a lawyer who can organize all the work.” However, during the investigation it turned out that he had no legal education and that he was a co-owner of the Secret Place restaurant in the center of Moscow.
Kibalchich was expected to testify in court on February 22. However, having seen journalists in the courtroom, the defendant’s lawyer and he himself immediately demanded that the trial be closed in order to “ensure the safety” of the defendant and his family members. The judge granted the request, after which everyone, including the defendant’s wife, was asked to leave the hall. Ekaterina Kibalchich flatly refused to answer questions from a Business FM correspondent. The court appointed the debate of the parties in his case for March 16. During them, the prosecutor will ask for a term for the defendant, he will say the last word and the court will retire for sentencing.
The defendant’s lawyer Vladimir Linnik did not communicate with the press before the verdict, citing a non-disclosure agreement for the preliminary investigation, which had long been completed.
As for Olga Mirimskaya and Yury Nosov, as Business FM has learned, the defendants have already studied about 70 volumes of the case and expect to complete the procedure in a couple of months. Mirimskaya’s lawyers declined to comment on the case. Earlier they stated that the testimony of the Kibalchich spouses formed the basis of three of the five episodes of the accusation of their client, whose innocence they intend to prove in court.