News

A court has recognized the evidence collected by the Kaliningrad Region Office of the Investigative Committee sufficient to convict former CEO of OAO Yantarny Yuvelirprom, a public corporation, Stepan Nikolayev. He was found guilty of a crime under Part 4, item “b” of Article 158 of the RF Penal Code (larceny committed by a group of people in conspiracy on a very large scale).

Nikolayev was exposed of major crime and then arrested in August 2015, following investigative and search operations carried out by regional offices of the Federal Security Service and the Investigative Committee. Later the accused was placed under house arrest and released on recognizance as he had made a plea deal and helped the investigators to identify other accomplices to the crime.

The investigators found out that, Niklayev, aware that raw amber of large fraction would be delivered to the storehouse of the company from December 2013 and January 2014 ordered his subordinates to put in the storehouse more than 250 bags of less valuable raw amber of small fractions so that he could later put them in the place of more valuable amber and then steal it.

In late January 2014, police officers of the regional police department handed over to CEO of Yantarny Yuverlirprom for safekeeping 4,838.3 kg raw amber and ready products worth more than 2.3 billion rubles confiscated from other company during an investigation in December 2013. Raw amber and amber products packed in bags sealed by the regional police department were placed in the company’s storehouse located in the settlement of Yantarny.

On the same day the CEO and his subordinates stole the amber and took it to a rented storehouse in a settlement in Guryevsk District.

To conceal the larceny, they sealed the bags with less valuable amber with police tags.

The court has sentenced Nikolayev to 3.5 years in a minimum-security correctional facility.