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The court found evidence collected by the Stavropol Territory Investigating bodies of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation sufficient to convict Former Head of Stavropol City Government Igor Bestuzhy. He has been found guilty of offenses under part 3 of article 30, part 6 of article 290 (attempted bribe-taking), and paragraph “c” of part 6 of article 290 of the RF Criminal Code (bribe-taking).

The court and investigators established that, in early August of 2009, a resident of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic requested real estate broker Nina Kraytor to help him in selecting and renting a plot of land located at the Dovatortsev Street and owned by the city of Stavropol. In her turn, having a friendly relationship with Leonid Kozlov, who was unofficially acting as an assistant of Deputy Mayor of the city of Stavropol Igor Bestuzhy at that time, Kraytor offered the former to help that man by talking to the deputy mayor. Upon obtaining a Bestuzhev’s consent, Kozlov met with the resident of Karachay-Cherkessia and told him that the man could rent a 25-are plot of land for a period of 5 years only if he gives 2 million rubles. As they had agreed, on August 14, 2009, the man handed over 2 million rubles to Leonid Kozlov at the second floor of the Stavropol city hall. Kozlov gave 200 thousand rubles of that amount to Kraytor as payment for her services, and handed over the rest of the sum amounting to one million 800 thousand rubles to Bestuzhy.

In addition, acting in a similar way through Kozlov and Kraytor, Bestuzhy tried to receive a 50-million-rubble bribe from another person for renting out a 5-hectare plot of land owned by the municipality to him. However, Bestuzhy failed to implement his criminal intent aimed at obtaining the above-mentioned funds due to the fact that his mediator and the real estate broker had been stopped by the police.

Investigators seized his property, including an elite 7-room apartment in the center of Stavropol, a country house, expensive cars, many Russian stocks and bank accounts, totaling to thirty million rubles. In order to prevent the alienation of property, Bestuzhy’s wife filed a lawsuit demanding to give her the property of her husband, so as to exempt it from seizure and not to pay the fine. She expected that the district court would quickly and unspokenly decide on her claim treating it as an ordinary civil action. However, thanks to the timely intervention of investigators, this combination did not work, and the claim was dismissed by the court without consideration.

Throughout the criminal investigation Bestuzhy had repeatedly undertaken a variety of attempts to justify his participation in illegal activities, not to mention his claim that proceedings against him had been launched due to political reasons and other banal and absurd accusations. But the claim that investigators tortured him in the pre-trial detention center stands out of this series of platitudes. Then, at one of the hearings, when his arrest was extended, Bestuzhy shamelessly said about the tortures, describing them in detail. But, in fact, he heard about all those Jesuit subtleties and details from his experienced cellmate on the eve of the court hearing, and investigators naturally found out about this.

It should be noted that the land that Bestuzhy intended to allocate for the construction of a shopping center, is now provided in the use of large families.

The court sentenced Bestuzhy to 9 years in maximum security prison and a fine of 500 million rubles. Moreover, he is deprived of the right to hold public offices relating to the function of the authorities’ representative and organizational, managerial and administrative functions within local governments for a period of 3 years. The court also decided to collect the bribe sum from Bestuzhy.

In 2012, Kozlov had been found guilty of attempted mediation in bribery. He was sentenced to a fine of 100 million rubles. In addition, he is deprived of the right to hold offices in state and municipal authorities for a period of 3 years.

Kraytor had been found guilty of attempted fraud and sentenced to two-year imprisonment and a fine of 200 thousand rubles.

Head of Media Relations V. Markin