The SCR has already initiated a second criminal case related to the collapse of VIM-Avia. This time the investigators suspected the leadership of the air carrier in the deliberate bankruptcy. According to the investigation, the top management first exported the assets of the company abroad, and then organized the receipt of loans, knowing that there are no funds for their repayment.

The fact that another criminal case has been instituted against VIM-Avia's management, Svetlana Petrenko, the official representative of the SCR, said. This case, in contrast to the first, excited under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code (fraud in a particularly large amount), is being investigated not in Moscow, but in Nizhny Novgorod. The grounds for initiating a new criminal case under art. 196 of the Criminal Code (deliberate bankruptcy) were the results of an audit conducted by the Volga Transport Prosecutor's Office.

"According to the investigation, the persons from the management and owners of VIM-Avia, Ltd., realizing that the airline is in an unstable financial and economic state, concluded in 2016 and 2017 clearly unprofitable transactions, including those aimed at withdrawing assets abroad in favor of affiliated organizations, "said Mrs. Petrenko." The contracts attracted huge financial costs and, as a result, deliberately led to the inability of a legal entity to fully satisfy the creditors' claims for a monetary obligation tures ".

As it was established at first by the supervisory authority and then by the investigators, in a number of contracts concluded by VIM-Avia with foreign firms, the exact price of the transactions was not indicated, as a result of which the amounts paid by the airline increased manifold.

Due to the lack of funds to pay accounts payable to counterparties, multibillion-dollar loans were obtained.

However, these violations in the actions of the company's management, according to law enforcement officers, were not limited. According to the investigation materials, knowing that it is impossible to satisfy creditors' claims, the owners and top management of VIM-Avia "instructed the accounting department to commit actions aimed at distorting the reporting indicators, concealing the high indicators of accounts payable in the accounts, instead of the existing loss by recording spurious information about the date of taking accounting costs, reflecting transactions on revenue from the sale of air transportation, which had not yet been implemented enes. "

As previously reported to Kommersant, in the already investigated fraud case, the general director of VIM-Avia, Alexander Kochnev and the chief accountant of the company Ekaterina Panteleeva, were placed under house arrest. According to the investigation, the airline's leaders, knowing that VIM-Avia is not able to fulfill its obligations to customers, continued to sell air tickets to them. In addition, and in the case of fraud, it is said that the company's assets were withdrawn to one-day firms and abroad. Damage to the case has not yet been calculated, but, according to preliminary data, it can amount to hundreds of millions of rubles - the company's debts are estimated at 7 billion rubles.

It is not ruled out that in a short time both cases will be merged into one production.