Federal Property Management Agency landed Aeroflot

A lawsuit was filed in the case of theft during the provision of legal services.
06.04.2020
Kommersant
Origin source
As Kommersant learned, in the criminal case of embezzlement of Aeroflot PJSC funds when a lawyer provided the airline with legal services, a new victim appeared. They became the capital's department of the Federal Property Management Agency. It has already sued the accused for 144.9 million rubles. The investigation causes damage to the airline at 250 million rubles. None of the defendants pleads guilty.

A new victim appeared in the case of embezzlement of funds from Aeroflot PJSC through fraud committed on an especially large scale by an organized group (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), the defense of the accused became aware after the other day the Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee, who is conducting this case, acquainted the defendants and their lawyers with the relevant resolution. From him, the defendants — the lawyers of the collegium collegium “Your Advocate Partner” (formerly “Konsors”) Alexander Slivko and Dina Kibets, as well as the deputy general director of Aeroflot Vladimir Alexandrov and the head of the legal department of the company Tatyana Davydova - found out that they are civil defendants in the lawsuit of the territorial Federal Property Management Agency in Moscow, which owns a 51.17% stake in the airline.

On the same day, the defendants and their defense familiarized themselves with the content of the claim, from which it followed that the state represented by the Federal Property Management Agency was recognized as the injured party in the criminal case and claimed damages in the amount of 144.9 million rubles.

The Investigative Committee initiated a criminal case on September 30 last year on the basis of the only report from the operative of the T department (transport) of the FSB of Russia. It stated that the lawyers of the college “Your Advocate Partner” together with the deputy general director - the director of the legal department of PJSC Aeroflot Vladimir Alexandrov and his deputy for the department Tatyana Davydova in the agreements on legal assistance provided by the airlines, significantly increased the cost of the work done, what caused the state damage, "having stolen at least 250 million rubles."

Aeroflot lawyers and top managers were detained on October 1-2, 2019, and then the Basmanny court authorized their arrest. In the course of the investigation, the investigation concluded that Vladimir Alexandrov (who had worked in the Investigative Committee until 2013), Tatyana Davydova, Dina Kibets and Alexander Slivko “entered into a criminal conspiracy from October 2015 to January 2016 and joined a criminal group to steal on a particularly large scale by deception and abuse of the trust of funds of PJSC Aeroflot - Russian Airlines. ” According to the investigation, the funds were allocated to the legal department of the company to pay the lawyers involved to protect the interests of Aeroflot due to the lack of full-time employees. For this, according to the Investigative Committee, Mr. Aleksandrov “in accordance with the developed plan, was to mislead Aeroflot officials” and convince them of the impossibility of representing the interests of the company in the courts by full-time lawyers and the need to conclude agreements with the college “Your lawyer partner”.

The role of lawyers Aleksandr Slivko and Dina Kibets, the case materials say, was to prepare and provide Aeroflot’s financial department with “invoices for payment and knowingly false acts regarding the volume and quantity of work performed.” From January 2016 to July 2017, between the Bar Association and the airline, five contracts were concluded for the provision of legal assistance in civil, arbitration, criminal and reputational cases. According to the lawyer, Mr. Slivko Denis Kobelev, the hourly payment for services by agreement of the parties ranged from € 350 to € 400, while the investigation claims that it should not exceed 3.6 thousand rubles. in hour. The amount stolen, according to the TFR, amounted to at least 250 million rubles. At present, the Basmanny Court of Moscow has extended the period of arrest to all those under investigation until May 30 (Aleksandrov is in Lefortovo, Slivko in SIZO-5, and Kibets and Davydova in the “female” SIZO-6).

The lawyer of Mr. Alexandrov, Maria Korchagina, told Kommersant that the defendants and the defense categorically disagree with the investigation, since "it is about the work done, not the theft."
“From May 2019 until the initiation of the criminal case, numerous checks were conducted against the accused, and they themselves actively cooperated with the investigation, Aeroflot provided all the necessary documents at the request of the investigation, and suddenly they found thefts on some kind of report,” says Ms. Korchagina, adding that the lawyers who are now accused have won all the lawsuits in favor of Aeroflot, saving the airlines more than 20 billion rubles. She also noted that not only the defense, but also representatives of the prosecutor's office and Aeroflot opposed the arrest of the defendants in the courts. “I can only guess why only the Federal Property Management Agency recognized the victims and did not recognize the other shareholders, and how it calculated the amount of its civil lawsuit. Most likely, the victim proceeded from the fact that he has 51% of the shares, and from the amount of the attorney’s fees, ”added Maria Korchagina.

In turn, Mr. Slivko’s lawyer Denis Kobelev specified that, according to recent estimates, “Your lawyer partner” has saved 31 billion rubles to Aeroflot. He also noted that representatives of the airline have repeatedly stated in courts that the defendants in the case did not cause harm to Aeroflot, and therefore there is no reason for a criminal case.

According to lawyer Kobelev, his principal Slivko wrote an open letter. It says that the price for legal services "was fair in view of the complexity and responsibility of the instructions and the amount of work." The author of the letter claims that he didn’t enter into any corruption conspiracies, but now they demand not only confession of guilt, but also “false testimonies” against strangers in the aviation industry. “And as part of the pressure, they transfer me from cell to cell, each worse than the previous one,” the author of the letter states.

Aeroflot refrained from commenting.

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