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Director of Federal Prison Authority’s preserving plant Pavel Belikov and his accomplices to stand trial for embezzlement

The Head Office of the Investigative Committee has finished the investigation against Pavel Belikov, the director of Preserving Plant, a federal state-funded unitary enterprise owned by the Federal Penitentiary Service, procurement director Sergei Safonov, CEO of OOO Master-Konditer Andrei Anoshin and businessmen Mger Kirakosyan and Slo Ivo. Depending on the role of each one, they are charged with embezzlement under Part 4 of Article 160, commercial bribery under Part 7 of Article 204, taking a bribe under Part 6 of Article 290 and fraud under Part 4 of Article 159 of the RF Criminal Code.

According to investigators, in 2015, Belikov and his accomplices Safonov, Anoshin and Kirakosyan embezzled more than 65.7 million rubles allocated to buy vegetable oil to meet the needs of the plant by concluding a fictitious contract with controlled companies that acted as mediators between wholesale supplies and the plant.

In 2015, Belikov received from Korakosyan an illegal reward of 30 million rubles for illegal actions he committed to sign the supply contract at inflated price.

The accused also colluded to steal funds of the federal budget assigned to buy margarine to be supplied to prisons. In 2016, the accomplices arranged that cheaper margarine produced by another plant was supplied to territorial offices of the Federal Penitentiary Service on behalf of the preserving plant and at doubled price. They then transferred the money they got under government contacts to companies they controlled. Their actions caused the state a damage of more than 40.9 million rubles.

A lot of investigative and procedural operations were carried out during the investigation. The investigators questioned more than 150 witnesses, including those living in different regions of Russia, analyzed a large number of financial documents, ordered and ran 15 complex examinations.

Though the accused deny all the charges, the investigators have enough evidence against them. The criminal case with the signed indictment has been referred to court.

 

Spokesperson for the Investigative Committee                                                                                    Svetlana Petrenko