News

A court has recognized the evidence collected by the Vologda Region authority of the Investigative Committee sufficient to announce a sentence over a criminal case opened into stealing of funds from Vologda branch of OAO Bank Moskvy by an organized criminal group. Former deputies of the Vologda Region Legislative Assembly Nikolai Golubin and his son Sergei Golubin, former deputy of Vologda City Duma Aleksandr Denisov, businessman Igor Sakharov and 41-year-old local woman Valeria Berdyeva were found guilty of crimes under Part 4 of Article 159 of the RF Penal Code (Fraud committed by an organized group).

According to the Investigative Committee, Nikolai and Sergei Golubin, for a few years acted as members of an organized group together with four more local residents and stole money of the Vologda branch of OAO Bank Moskvy disguising it as loans. Nikolai Golubev used his position of the director of the branch. Loans for more than 100 physical persons and legal entities were illegally issued starting from 2005 and for more than 3 years under direct leadership of the Golubins father and son. Until 2008, they enjoyed active assistance from two jurists, a lawyer and former official of a tax authority, that is Bolubins’ acquaintances who had special juridical knowledge and connections, specialists in the area of banking and entrepreneurship.

In all, the accused used criminal schemes including those using forged documents to get about 300 million rubles, part of which they gave back in order to conceal their previous crimes and had the opportunity to continue staling from the bank. The damage done to the bank is estimated at more than 200 million rubles.

The investigators revealed that the stolen money was distributed among members of the criminal group, with most of it having been spent to buy real estate or invest in authorized capital of companies. One of the accused, jurist Vadim Smirnov, has been hiding from the investigation and court since 2013. The criminal case against him has been severed to form a separate proceeding while he was put on a federal wanted list.

During the probe the investigators ran over 20 forensic inquiries, analyzed and joined to the case over 130 loan files and 100 extracts on cash flows, conducted more than 30 searches in the residences and offices of the accused and the offices of different companies. Over 340 witnesses have been questioned, arrested 27 properties worth over 100 million rubles and carried out a lot of other investigative and procedural operations.

Operative support was provided by the officials of the Vologda Region Office of the Federal Security Service, together with whom the regional directorate of the Investigative Committee detained Nikolai and Sergei Golubin in December 2011.

The court has sentenced Nikolai Golubin to 5 years in a minimum-security penal colony and a fine of 1 million rubles, Sergei Golubin to 4.5 years of probation and a fine of 1 million rubles, Berdyeva 4 years of probation and a fine of 300,000 rubles, Sakharov and Denisov to 4 years of probation and a fine of 800,000 rubles each.