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Vyacheslav Gaizer and his accomplices appear in court

Today, the Zamoskvorechye District Court of Moscow has opened today a preliminary hearing of a case against 14 people who committed crimes as a criminal community in the Komi Republic. Depending on the role of each one, they are charged with setting up and membership in a criminal community under Article 210, fraud under Article 159, money laundering under Part 4, items “a” and “b’ of Article 174.1 and bribery under Part 6 of Article 290 of the RF Criminal Code. The case was investigated by the Major Cases Directorate of the Investigative Committee.

According to investigators, the criminal community was set up in 2006 and was headed by Vyacheslav Gaizer, Vladimir Torlopov, Alexander Zarubin, Alexander Chernov and Valery Veselov. Leaders and members of the group committed crimes to get hold of highly profitable enterprises in the region or to control them to make profit. For example, in 2010, they organized privatization of Zelenskaya Poultry Factory. Later on, as a result of a fraud the assets of the factory switched ownership to that of a legal entity controlled by the group. To launder some 1 billion rubles of dividends the accomplices made a number of deals with that money. Additionally, the accused stole funds of OAO Investment Projects Support Foundation causing the Komi Republic a damage of 4.5 billion rubles. The investigators arrested assets of the accused worth the same amount of money.

Along with that, the investigators revealed a number of occasions when members of the group had taken bribes. In 2013, they took two 25-percent shares worth 160 million rubles in the authorized capital of OOO Avtotsentr as a bribe. Later those shares were made on OOO Hotel Servis controlled by Chernov and thus were laundered.

In 2008, Gaizer assisted to Serditov be appointed CEO of OAO Syktyvkar Alcoholic Beverage Factory. For that he and his accomplice received as illegal rewards 37.5 million rubles from Serditov between 2009 and 2015.

Spokesperson for the Investigative Committee                                                                                        Svetlana Petrenko