As usual, the staff of Kommersant-Vlast has selected ten criminal cases from 2009 with precedents for years to come.
THE CASE OF THE MURDER OF ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA
On February 19, the jury at the Moscow District Military Court delivered a not-guilty verdict in the case of the murder of Novaya Gazeta columnist Anna Politkovskaya. Brothers Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov (charged under Article 105 of the Criminal Procedural Code of the Russian Federation, "Homicide"), former operative of the Moscow Organized Crime Directorate (UBOP), Sergey Khadzhikurbanov (Articles 105, 222, "Illegal Arms Sale," Article 286, "Abuse of Office," and Article 163, "Extortion"), and former security guard Pavel Ryaguzov (Articles 286 and 163) walked away free.
Anna Politkovskaya was shot and killed on October 7, 2006 at the entrance to her Moscow house. On August 27, 2007, Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika triumphantly declared that the murder had been solved. Eleven people had been detained, but eventually only four were charged. Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov allegedly helped the killer, their brother Rustam (who is on the wanted list), and Khadzhikurbanov had organized the crime. Ryaguzov, who allegedly obtained the journalist's address, was left in the case because, as investigation claimed, he had beaten up a smalltime businessman in 2002 together with Khadzhikurbanov. The names of those who commissioned the murder were not disclosed. The trial began in November 2008 with a row: presiding judge Yevgeny Zubov ruled that the case be heard in camera "because of pressure on the jury," but a member of the jury speaking through the media denied this claim and the judge had to open the courtroom to the public. Eventually, the jury unanimously acquitted all of the accused.
Shortly after the murder, Vladimir Putin lamented that the death of Politkovskaya "is causing more damage to the authorities than her publications." A speedy resolution of the investigation could have compensated for the damage, but the verdict merely proved that the law enforcers were incapable of building a convincing case. The Prosecutor's Office still has a chance to rectify the situation. In response to its protest, the Supreme Court admitted on June 25 that the defence "committed numerous violations of the Criminal Procedural Code". A new trial is being prepared. Khadzhikurbanov has been in pretrial detention on different charges since April.
THE CASE OF DELAYED RELEASE-2
On April 21 the Preobrazhensky District Court in Moscow released on bail the former deputy chief of the Yukos legal unit, Svetlana Bakhmina. Because of bureaucratic red tape, Bakhmina and her seven-month-old daughter, who was born in prison, was not released until April 27.
Vlast gave a detailed account of Bakhmina's unsuccessful attempts to be released on bail in its review of the "2008 Cases." The lawyer of the disgraced oil company was detained in 2004 and was convicted in 2006 under Article 160 ("Appropriation or Embezzlement") and Article 198 ("Tax Evasion") and sentenced to six and a half years imprisonment. Meanwhile, she was sent to serve her sentence at the penitentiary IK-14 in Mordovia. After serving more than half of her term, she applied to be released on bail pointing out that she was on good behaviour, had achieved impressive results in her work, had written articles for the prison newspaper and made dresses for amateur plays. However, the Zubova Polyana District Court of Mordovia twice ignored the public campaign in her defense, the approval of bail by the colony administration, and the local prosecutor's office, as well as the fact that Bakhmina was pregnant. During the proceedings, Bakhmina was laid up at a hospital in the Moscow Region to give birth to her child. On March 4, 2009, during its third hearing, the Mordova Court dropped the case and handed it over to Moscow, where the convict was currently being held. The Moscow Preobrazhensky District Court was more resolute.
This is a rare case of public opinion influencing official actions. But the fact that the trial of a fairly standard case dragged on for more than a year may indicate that the justice system is not prepared to act independently. Bakhmina became the first protagonist in the Yukos case to be released on bail, but that will hardly set a precedent for the primary targets of the case, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. On March 31, the Khamovnichesky District Court in Moscow began hearings in what amounted to a second criminal case against them: this time on charges of stealing oil and laundering 450 billion roubles and $7.5 billion of dirty money.
THE CASE OF HARDCORE CRIMINALS
On May 13, the Khabarovsk Court, based on a jury verdict, delivered a sentence on eight leaders of the largest organized criminal community (Obshchak) in the Far East, sentencing them to between 8 and 25 years at a high-security prison.
Obschak was formed in the mid-1980s in Komsomolsk-on-Amur by crime lord Yevgeny Vasin (nicknamed Jam, he died in pretrial detention in October 2001). According to the law enforcement bodies, at its peak, the community had more than 4000 active members and controlled criminal activities across the Far East. Criminal proceedings against Obschak were launched on May 12, 2005 under Article 210 G ("organizing a criminal community"). As a result, almost all of the group leaders were put behind bars. They included crime lords Eduard Sakhnov (Sakhno), Oleg Semakin (Yeva) and Oleg Shokhirev (Malek). The trial began in June 2007. In the dock were 11 persons suspected of a variety of crimes, including homicide, kidnappings, beatings, burglary, and theft of cars and weapons. As a result, the jury cleared three of the accused of all charges and the rest of most of the charges. However, the prosecutors still managed to secure a verdict on the gravest of the charges, organizing a criminal community.
Because the accused were convicted under Article 210, the trial was seen as a test case. Previously, that article was applied only as a supplement to other charges, now it will be used much more frequently. One proof of this is that as early as autumn, amendments to the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedural Code toughened punishment for organizing and participating in organized criminal communities. The minimum sentence was increased from 7 to 12 years and the maximum from 15 to 20 years, while for career criminals, it was raised to life.
THE CASE OF UKHTA ARSONISTS
On June 19, the Supreme Court of the Komi Republic passed a life sentence on 22-year-old Ukhta citizens, Anton Korostelev and Alexei Pulyalin, on charges of setting fire to the Passage trade centre in Ukhta, causing the death of 25.
The fire at the Passage occurred on July 11, 2005. In May 2006, the Prosecutor's Office charged Pulyalin, detained in late April, and Korostelev, who was serving a sentence for stealing cell phones, under Articles 105 ("Homicide"), Article 167 ("Wilful Destruction of Property through Arson"), and Articles 111, 112 and 115 ("Inflicting Harm to Health"). Prosecution claims they committed arson as repayment for a debt. On June 28, 2008, the Supreme Court of the Komi Republic acquitted them, dismissing the prosecution's arguments due to crude violations and discrepancies in the investigation materials. The ruling was quashed in October by the Supreme Court of the RF at the request of the Prosecutor's Office. On January 12, 2009 a retrial began, which ended in life sentences for both men. The following day, investigators detained the Makhmudov brothers, both Ukhta businessmen, charging them with organizing the arson. The sentence was the harshest among all cases of major fires in Russia and may serve as a precedent for future trials connected with the fire at the Lame Horse club in Perm. The triumph of justice for the Prosecutor's Office on the second time around, however, was marred somewhat by the statements from former Komi Interior Ministry official Mikhail Yevseyev and former Deputy Prosecutor of the city of Ukhta, Grigory Chekalin. In a video address to President Medvedev that they posted on the Internet in November, they declared that evidence in the case had been rigged and that the jailed people were innocent.
THE CASE OF THE DISGRACED INVESTIGATOR
On June 30, the Moscow City Court sentenced the former head of the Investigation Directorate of the Investigative Committee at the Russian Federation Prosecutor's Office (SKP), Dmitry Dovgy, to nine years imprisonment. The former member of the Investigative Directorate of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office, Andrei Sagura, was sentenced to eight years as an accomplice.
Dmitry Dovgy and Andrei Sagura were detailed on August 18, 2008. On August 25, the former executive of the special investigative committee was charged with bribe-taking (Article 290) and abuse of office (Article 286). Investigation claimed that he got the money from Ruslan Valitov, who was implicated in the theft of more than 6 billion roubles from Tomskneft and was in danger of being transferred from the witness stand to the dock. The businessman passed on 750,000 euros in wine boxes through Andrei Sagura in exchange for a ruling dismissing a criminal case. In March 2009, preliminary hearings decided that the case be tried by jury. On June 15, the head of the SKP, Alexander Bastrykin, told the court that he "completely trusted" his former subordinate until the latter had offered to release on bail the ailing vice president of Yukos, Vasily Aleksanyan. On June 22, the accused pleaded not-guilty in their final statements, and Mr Dovgy even promised that he would become a human rights activist. On June 24, the jury passed a guilty verdict on both, with Dovgy meriting clemency, unlike Mr Sagura who abetted him. In addition to prison sentences, they were to pay 800,000 roubles in fines, and the former head of the Main Investigative Directorate under the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor's Office of the RF was banned from working in the civil service for three years.
Dmitry Dovgy is currently the highest ranking investigator to be put behind bars. He attributes his problems to the conflict with his former boss, Bastrykin, who allegedly thought that his subordinate was too active and did not "follow instructions" regarding cases under investigation.
THE CASE OF DRUG CORRUPTION
On August 12, the Moscow City Court sentenced seven executives of the Federal Mandatory Medical Insurance Fund to between four and nine years for bribe-taking. The Vice President of the pharmaceutical company Protek, Vitaly Smerdov, a bribe giver, was sentenced to a year and a half in internal exile.
The case of corruption at the Fund can be traced to November 14, 2006, when the Prosecutor General's Office and the FSB searched the Fund and the offices of major pharmaceutical companies. Shortly afterwards, the Fund's head, Andrei Taranov, and seven of his subordinates were arrested on charges of receiving kickbacks from the territorial branches and the pharmaceutical company for distributing budget money for the purchase of drugs under the Additional Drug Provision Programme (DLO). In August 2007, the head of Protek, Smerdov, who ended up being the only man accused of bribe-giving, was detained. Other businessmen under suspicion were highly cooperative with the investigation and became witnesses. The case featured 55 episodes of bribe-taking to the tune of 27.7 million roubles. On July 30, the jury returned a guilty verdict on nine out of the eleven accused under Article 285 ("Abuse of power"), Article 290 ("Bribe taking"), and Article 291 ("Bribe giving") of the Criminal Code of the RF. As a result, Andrei Taranov was sentenced to seven years in jail, two of his deputies were sentenced to nine years each, two more to seven years, and heads of the Fund's two directorates to four years. The chief accountant's sentence was suspended on grounds of his health.
The case of the "werewolves" at the Mandatory Medical Insurance Fund was one of the biggest corruption trials in recent years. As a result, in September 2007, the Minister of Healthcare and Social Development Mikhail Zurabov, who supervised the Additional Drug Provision Programme and knew Andrei Taranov personally since the mid-1990s, lost his job. Taranov was sacked by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on August 19, 2009, a week after the sentence, allegedly "at his own request".
THE CASE OF THE "MURDERED COP"
On September 28 the Central District Court of Novosibirsk sentenced 22-year-old Olga Melnichenko to 4.5 years of internal exile for running over and killing a traffic policeman while driving under the influence of alcohol.
On April 30 Olga Melnichenko, a member of a street-racers club, and her friend drank 6 litres of beer and went on a drive through Novosibirsk. At around 23.00, the red Toyota Soarer, driven by Melnichenko at a speed of about 80 km/hr on Ippodromskaya Street, hit a foreign-made car which had been stopped by a senior traffic police inspector, captain Dmitry Chulkov, and then the policeman himself. The officer died on the spot from his injuries. Shortly after the accident, Melnichenko sent an SMS to her boyfriend, "Honey, I killed a cop, sorry. What should I do?" On May 4, the court arrested the young woman and in September found her guilty of "violating traffic rules while under the influence of alcohol and causing the death of a person through negligence" (Part 4, Article 264). The court suspended her driving license for three years upon her future release. The court partially upheld the 7 million rouble claim of moral damages from the parents and widow of the dead officer, cutting it from 7 million to 300,000 roubles.
In the outgoing year, policemen, if they appeared in high profile cases, were usually the accused. Suffice it to recall the massacre at a Moscow supermarket staged by Major Denis Yevsyukov, the murder of a school pupil by a traffic cop in Tyva, or the beating to death of an Abkhazian by three policemen at the Kuzminky metro station in Moscow. The case of Olga Melnichenko was one of the rare cases in which a civilian's run-in with the police did not evoke sympathy. Perhaps this was the effect sought by Novosibirsk police force, which subsequently published the drunken racer's SMS on the Internet.
THE CASE OF BULLYING A GOVERNOR'S SCHOOLMATE
On November 12 the Moscow City Court hosted an away session of the Kuibyshevsky District Court of St. Petersburg, which sentenced "authoritative" Petersburg businessman Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin) to 14 years in prison for fraud (Article 159) and money laundering (Article 174-1) as a member of an organized criminal group.
Vladimir Barsukov was detained on August 22, 2007 on suspicion of organizing an attempt on the life of Sergey Vasilyev, co-owner of the Petersburg oil terminal. On August 26, he was transferred to the Moscow pretrial detention centre Matrosskaya Tishina, because the search warrants had been issued by the Basmanny District Court of Moscow. He was also charged with organizing a criminal community in Tambov in addition to 13 hostile takeovers of Petersburg enterprises. Among the enterprises named was the restaurant Peterburgsky Ugolok, which Barsukov and his accomplices tried to overrun in 2005. In August 2008, the businessman was transferred to Petersburg, where the case was opened, but the hearings were then moved to Moscow because of fears for the lives of the accused.
Vladimir Barsukov was known since the early 1990s as "the Governor of Petersburg by night," although he cultivated the image of a businessman, public figure, and philanthropist (he sponsored the building of the nuclear submarine Tambov). However, his reputation and connections did little to help him in a stand-off with real power. According to some data, the investigation of the case against the members of the Tambov criminal group began after the appeal of the owner of Peterburgsky Ugolok, Natalya Shpakova, who knew the St. Petersburg Governor, Valentina Matviyenko when both were active members of the Young Communist League in the Soviet Union.
THE CASE OF FALSELY REPORTING THE PRESIDENT'S DEATH
On November 26, the Kirovsky District Court in Kazan sentenced Irek Murtazin, the former press secretary of Tatarstan's President, to 21 months internal exile for spreading false rumours about the death of Mintimer Shaimiyev while on holiday in Turkey.
On September 12, 2008 Irek Murtazin posted a report on his blog about the alleged sudden death of President Shaimiyev under the headline "terrible breaking news." The blog caused panic in the republic, a 10% drop of Tatneft shares and paralyzed the work of several agencies in the republic. On December 3, the Investigative Committee at the RF Prosecutor's Office for Tatarstan opened criminal proceedings against Murtazin under Article 129 ("Slander") and Article 137 ("Intrusion of Privacy"), and on December 15, another charge was added under Article 282 ("Inciting Hatred or Hostility"). According to the investigation, in his book Mintimer Shaimiyev: Tatarstan's Last President, Murtazin falsely accused the President of corruption, growing drug addiction, and alcoholism, as well as unleashing the war in Chechnya. On June 19, 2009, the case reached the court. The court session on August 10 was addressed by President Shaimiyev himself, who said that "such things are not to be forgiven" and that the accused deserved "severe and just punishment." The court heeded the President's words, although it dropped the charge of intrusion of privacy.
The verdict sets a dangerous precedent that can land anyone in jail who criticizes a Russian official. It can also be seen as proof that Mintimer Shaimiyev is irreplaceable. According to the prosecution, the report about his death caused "a sense of imminent danger to political and economic stability in society" among the people of the Republic.
THE CASE OF THE ACCIDENTAL MURDER OF AN OPPOSITION SUPPORTER
On December 11, the City Court of Karabulak sentenced Ibragim Yevloyev (former bodyguard of the former Interior Minister of Ingushetia) to two years of internal exile for shooting and killing the owner of opposition website Ingushetia.ru, Magomed Yevloyev.
On August 31, 2008 Magomed Yevloyev was flying to Magas on the same plane with the President of Ingushetia, Murat Zyazikov. While onboard the plane, the two were engaged in an altercation that threatened to develop into a fight, Ingushetia.ru reports. Immediately after landing, Magomed Yevloyev was detained by security police. According to the investigation, while inside the police car, Yevloyev tried to snatch an automatic rifle from one of the guards. In the ensuing scuffle, Ibragim Yevloyev accidentally pulled the trigger and the bullet hit the detained man's temple. On the same day, the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal case under Part 2, Article 109 ("Causing Death through Negligence due to Improper Performance of Duty"). The following day, 800 people staged a rally in the centre of Nazran. The rally was not dispersed until the morning of September 2. The investigation was completed quickly and the case was handed over to the Nazran District Court in Ingushetia. However, all the judges had been disqualified on various grounds, including kinship ties to the involved parties. Eventually, the case was taken up by the City Court of Karabulak.
The killing of Magomed Yevloyev created tensions in the Republic that led to a change of government: Murat Zyazikov, the Republic's President, was replaced by Yunus-bek Yevkurov in October 2008. However, the situation in Ingushetia as a whole did not change. In October 2009, Maksharip Aushev, who had been chief of Ingushetia.ru after Magomed Yevloyev's death, was shot dead.
Nikolai Gulko