The Investigative Committee of Russia has finished the criminal investigation into Alexander Shestun, the former Head of Serpukhov Municipal District of Moscow Region. He is accused of committing offenses under Part 4 of Article 159, Paragraph B of Part 4 of Article 174.1, Article 289, and Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of Russia (swindling; legalization of amounts of money acquired by a person as the result of the committed offense; illegal business activity; bribe-taking on an especially large scale).

According to the investigation, in 2003-2018, Shestun, holding the designated position, had created and managed through proxies 43 commercial organizations. The income acquired from those activities he had used to buy underpriced municipal land plots. He is also accused of bribe-taking for general patronage.

Moreover, in 2008-2011, Shestun jointly with Krivodubsky and Samsonov had illegally acquired ownership rights for four land lots located in Borisovo village of Dankovskoe rural settlement of Serpukhov Municipal District of Moscow Region, with an area of 10 hectares, causing the damage to the budget on a very large scale in the amount of over 64.5 million rubles. For this purpose, they used Center LLC affiliated with them. The criminal scheme had consisted of an initial lease of the land to the legal entity with subsequent construction of a small household building on this land. Following the registration of ownership, the land had been resold.

For instance, in 2011-2014, through a number of transactions via Center LLC, Morgan LLC, and ITV-Service LLC affiliated with them, they had legalized at a large scale the illegally acquired property, such as land lots located in Borisovo village of Dankovskoe rural settlement of Serpukhov Municipal District of Moscow Region, selling them to Lenta LLC for 160 million rubles. Originally they had purchased the land only for 628 rubles.

During the investigation, the evidence was found that Shestun, Krivodubsky, and Samsonov had actually owned the property for the amount of around 3.2 billion rubles (at cadastral value) registered both on them and their family members, relatives, other affiliated legal entities and individuals. At the same time, some of them had been not aware of the number of real estate assets registered in their names. The evidence gathered by the investigation provided grounds for claims of the Prosecutor General’s Office; the first claim was granted by the court to return to state property of the total value of approximately 2.2 billion rubles; the second claim is being reviewed.

In addition, in 2010-2011, Shestun had used his official powers for monetary purposes to organize and carry out, by means of the local Administration, an informal assessment of financial and economic activities of an autonomous non-commercial organization for the development of physical education and sports in order to estimate allocations and expenditures. Having obtained the requested information, the accused had offered the head of this organization general patronage and condoning through ranks for a cash reward. From 2012 to 2018, the said representative had been mediating to Shestun bribes of the total value of 9.4 million rubles and purchased sports equipment worth over 500 thousand rubles for Shestun’s recreation resort. Thus, the total sum of the bribe had exceeded 9.9 million rubles.

The probes into Boris Krivodubsky and Sergey Samsonov have been presented separately due to the fact that they are searched for.

The investigators collected enough evidence for the criminal case to be referred to the Prosecutor’s Office to approve an indictment.

 

Official spokesperson for the Investigative Committee of Russia S. Petrenko