The St. Petersburg City Court dismissed an appeal from the employees of the Russian subsidiary Hochtief AG, the German construction concern Hochtief Development Russland (CDR), who were sentenced to imprisonment for falsifying documents in a commercial dispute with the business structure of the car dealer Evgeny Voitenkov. He paid XDR € 4 million on the decision of the Stockholm Arbitration, after which he obtained criminal prosecution of opponents. The verdict came into force. The victim intends to collect damages from Hochtief, which announced the curtailment of business in Russia.

As Kommersant was informed in the joint press service of the courts of St. Petersburg, the appellate instance of the city court left unchanged the conviction of the members of the KhDR, issued a year ago by the Oktyabrsky district court. Recall, the former general director of the KDR Ekaterina Radaeva and the company's top manager Vadim Sokolov were sentenced to two years in a colony-settlement, the driver of the KhDR Alexei Efremov - by a year and a half. They were found guilty of attempted fraudulent theft of € 4 million from Pulkovskaya Investment Company LLC - the structure of Evgeny Voitenkov, representing the injured legal entity. He got criminal prosecution of former partners after in 2013 the Stockholm arbitration ordered his company Pulkovskaya to pay XDR about € 4 million in the framework of the agreement on the implementation of the project of a multifunctional complex with auto centers of Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. Evgeny Voitenkov accused partners of forgery of documents. The leadership of the "Russian Pillars", the Russian-German Foreign Trade Chamber and the Eastern Committee of the German Economy appealed to the incumbent First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov with a request to take the case for control. And Hochtief AG announced the curtailment of business in Russia and initiated the bankruptcy procedure of the KhDR.

Representatives of the Consulate General of Germany in St. Petersburg, the Russian-German Foreign Trade Chamber, the "Support of Russia" and the business ombudsman of St. Petersburg attended the meeting in the city hall. The convicts and their defenders asked the city court to overturn the conviction. In total, the number of all complaints submitted to the court by the defense and the defendants of the case amounted to over 300 pages. On the first attempt, the appeal could not consider this criminal case, returning it back - to familiarize the defense side with the record of the court sessions. According to lawyer Yevgeny Rubinshtein, the defense, having examined the document, filed about 4,500 pages of comments on it. At the same time, the Oktyabrsky District Court justifies its conclusions in the verdict with evidence that is not in the materials of this criminal case, but the request to verify this circumstance was denied protection, the lawyer said. Mr. Rubinshtein insists that the district court did not conduct the necessary examinations and did not take into account the decision of the Stockholm arbitration, which has a pre-judicial significance. The defense intends to appeal the verdict in the cassation, but it came into force, and the convicts must go to the place of punishment.

Ekaterina Radaeva told Kommersant that her criminal case "directly illustrates the words of President Vladimir Putin about the enormous pressure on business." She stated that she had only "fulfilled the will and all the demands" of Evgeny Voitenkov, whom he considered "a future partner in a long-term project".

Mr. Voitenkov told Kommersant that the "failure to fulfill the contractual conditions and the forgery of documents" by the staff of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan had been fully proved. Now the businessman intends to obtain in the Russian arbitration courts that recognized the decision of the Stockholm Arbitration, the cancellation of the writ of execution on which he paid the disputable amount, and recover damages from Hochtief in the courts of Germany and Great Britain.

"Unfortunately, the court of St. Petersburg does not take into account the decisions of arbitration and Stockholm courts," - confirmed "Kommersant" counselor of the business ombudsman of St. Petersburg, Ilya Antonov. In the office of the business ombudsman of the Russian Federation, Boris Titov and the "Russian Support" do not comment on the case before acquaintance with the text of the decision of the City Court.

Meanwhile, in the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg, there was a missing volume No. 7 with the case materials on the issue of the writ of execution for the decision of the Moscow Interdisciplinary Arbitration Court on the suit against KhDR of another structure of Evgeny Voitenkov, OOO Olimp FS. The Arbitration Court recovered from KhDR about € 5 million for a loan, which the company, according to its decision, took in 2010 from "Olympus FS". XDR denied the fact of signing the loan agreement and receiving money, as well as the conclusion of the arbitration clause and tried to obtain criminal prosecution of Mr. Voitenkov. The materials that disappeared from the arbitration court were the key evidence of their falsification, they said in the Democratic Republic of Germany. In the St. Petersburg Arbitration Court, Kommersant was informed that the loss of the volume found in the end was the result of a disciplinary offense by a court officer. Konstantin Rostislavlev, the general director of KDR, did not answer calls from Kommersant.