A court has recognized the evidence gathered by the Main Investigations Directorate of the Russia’s Investigative Committee sufficient to convict former detectives of Tax Crimes Department of the Directorate of Internal Affairs for the South-West District of Moscow, Dmitry Khristoforov and Sergei Oganov. They were charged with exceeding official power that caused grave consequences (Paragraph "c" of Part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code).
It should be noted that the crime was revealed by an investigator of the Main Investigations Directorate of the Russia’s Investigative Committee during the investigation of a number of criminal cases over stealing more than 10 billion rubles disguised as returning the VAT from the Russian Federation budget.
The court and investigators have found that in 2009-2010, being staffers of the internal affairs bodies, Khristoforov and Oganov executed requests of taxation services to check economic activity of firms that later were proved to be phony ones. The task of the operative agents was to find whether the firms had storehouses, goods, workers, which for the taxation services was the proof that there was economic activity and was the ground to return VAT. However, Khristoforov and Oganov conspired with unknown persons, knowing that firms were not running any economic activity, made fictitious documents that there was economic activity. These documents were submitted to Moscow Inspectorate No 28 of the Federal taxation Service and were the basis for ungrounded decisions to return the VAT to firms, which in fact did not run any economic activity. These actions inflicted on the state a loss of more than 3 billion rubles.
The court sentenced Khristoforov to 7 years in prison and Oganov to 4 years and 9 months in prison.
Head of Media Relations V.I. Markin
PDF version 
DOC version
