Paccording to the UK version, the criminal community included almost all businessmen and officials who were related to the Torex group of companies from the Khabarovsk Territory. Furgal appears in the case, but he has not been charged
Sergey Furgal
The Investigative Committee has charged the defendants in the criminal case about financial fraud in the Torex Group of companies, close to the former governor of the Khabarovsk Territory Sergey Furgal, with organizing a criminal community (OPS), Kommersant reported.
According to investigators, the OPS included businessmen and officials associated with the group, and the community was led by Deputy Governor Yuri Zlochevsky and lawyer Nikolai Shukhov. Furgal, who has been in custody in Moscow for a year on charges of organizing the murders of businessmen in the Far East in the mid-2000s, was not among the accused, the newspaper writes.
OPS “Torex” was created at the end of 2018 and consisted of three divisions, according to the UK. The first was led by the director of the Amurstal steelmaking plant in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, which is part of the Group of Companies, Sergey Kuznetsov and his deputy for safety, Dmitry Kozlov. According to the investigation, they produced fictitious documents, with the help of which the group’s enterprises could receive “deliberately non-refundable” loans.
The second division was allegedly responsible for accounting support. It was headed by the chief accountant of the GC Galina Aleynikova and the financial director of the group Vladimir Karmashkov, the newspaper writes.
The third administrative division of the OPS was headed by Yuri Zolochevsky, who until July 2020 was the first deputy chairman of the Government of the Khabarovsk Territory for economy and investment. Zolochevsky, according to the UK, “planned crimes and carried out the interaction of the group with state and credit organizations”.
According to investigators, the co-owner of Torex Group of Companies, Nikolai Mistryukov, and the lawyer Roman Shukhov, who did not hold official positions in the group, represented the interests of the now former governor of Furgal in the OPS. At the same time, Shukhov allegedly simultaneously carried out “operational management of the current activities” of the entire community.
Samzhe Furgal, according to the documents of the UK, “held public political positions”, therefore, he personally participated in criminal and commercial activities of the OPS only occasionally. In particular, Furgal allegedly achieved “unlimited financing” of commercial structures “Torex” through the Khabarovsk and Moscow branches of JSC “SME-bank”. According to the investigation, using the “authority and significance of the positions he holds”, Furgal convinced the bank’s chairman Dmitry Golovanov that he would “eliminate any obstacles”that would prevent borrowers from returning loans.
The UK believes that the organizers of the OPS failed to involve Golovanov in it, but he agreed to “contribute to their benefit and began to abuse his powers contrary to the interests of the bank”. The banker’s case was allocated to a separate production, the newspaper writes.
For example, in February 2019, LLC “Builder”, which is part of the GC, submitted to SME-bank a fictitious contract for the export of a batch of metal to POSCO International Corporation, the largest steel mill in South Korea, Kommersant reports. Under this contract, the general director of the “Builder” Gennady Savochkin,who agreed, according to the investigation, to participate in the scam, received a loan of 567 million rubles. The participants of the OPS returned part of the money to the bank in order to “disguise their criminal actions”, and 376 million rubles, according to the IC, were stolen, “sending it to the economic needs of other enterprises of the group”.
In the summer of 2019, another company from the group “Scrap Far East” LLC began to cooperate with Posco. She received 942 million rubles from the Moscow branch of the SME, of which 483 million rubles, according to investigators, were stolen.
At the end of that year, according to the IC, the construction company LLC “Far Eastern Monolith” was included in the scope of the OPS activities. She was not a member of the Torex Group of Companies, but, according to the investigation, she was dependent on it.
As follows from the charges, the general director of “Monolith” Evgeny Averyanov, with the help of the heads of the OPS, received a loan of 500 million rubles from the SME Bank, for which he promised to buy metal products of the “Amurstal” plant during the year. The businessman immediately transferred all this money to the plant’s account, but two weeks later he demanded to return it. The conclusion of the contract coincided with the arrest of one of the shareholders of the Civil Code,Mistryukov, and the change of the management of the plant “Amurstal”, therefore, the CEO of “Monolith”, according to him, decided to cancel the payment. 195 million rubles. he managed to get it back, but the SK considered the refund a fraudulent operation. According to the investigation, all suspicious manipulations with credit money were committed with the same purpose & mdash;« to disperse & raquo; them between the group’s enterprises and steal them.
At the beginning of 2020, members of the criminal community “misled” the management of the British fuel corporation Global Metcorp Ltd. According to investigators, the defendants promised him a batch of rolled metal from Amurstal, made fictitious railway invoices for the delivery of metal from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to the port of Vanino and sent them to customers along with invoices for payment, after which they transferred $8.7 million (523 million rubles) to the plant. These funds, according to the UK, also disappeared in the economic activities of the group.
In addition, the organizers of the OPS allegedly tried to involve the arbitration court of the Khabarovsk Territory in their activities. This scheme, according to the UK, began to be used in the community in 2020, after Mistryukov, who was arrested in November 2019 in the case of contract killings, sold his shares in Torex Group of Companies. Despite the shiftthe shareholders of “Amurstal”, the heads of the OPS continued to control the enterprises scattered throughout the Far East, the collectors of raw materials for the plant. Taking into account the changes that have occurred, they tried to withdraw the group’s assets from the “center” in Komsomolsk-on-Amur to the periphery with the help of an arbitration court.
According to investigators, in the spring of 2020, suppliers and partners of the plant flooded the enterprise with lawsuits. First, the head of the Far Eastern Monolith Averyanov appealed to arbitration, demanding to return to him the remaining part of the advance of 305 million rubles at the plant. Then the debt of “Amurstal” in 653 million rubles for the delivered metal was declared by “The Builder”, and in June, with a similar claim for 298 million rubles, “Scrap Far East” applied to arbitration.
The judges accepted the claims, began to consider them and, possibly, satisfied them, if “on July 8, 2020, the criminal activities of the group were not stopped by law enforcement officers”. On this day, Furgal was detained on suspicion of organizing murders and attempted murder. He was not charged in the OPS case, the newspaper writes.
A representative of the Torex Group of Companies, who wished to remain anonymous, explained to the publication that the persons involved in the OPS case do not admit guilt and consider all the listed episodes of embezzlement to be the usual business activities of several companies united into a corporation. According to him, the loan money referred to in the documents of the IC was not withdrawn from circulation and was not plundered, but distributed among the enterprises belonging to the group. “Arbitration disputes between partners are also commonplace in any production association,” the source of the publication added.
The directors of the three borrower firms mentioned in the charges fulfilled their obligations to the bank until they were arrested, and the entire Torex group paid about 4 billion rubles in taxes in 2019, he continued. Furgal, according to the representative of the Group of Companies, did discuss lending issues with the management of the SME Bank, but “he was busy” at the same time not for “Torex”, but for financing the industry of the region as a whole.
At the same time, the IC qualified all these episodes as a particularly large fraud committed in the usual way or in the field of lending (part 4 of Article 159 and part 4 of Article 159.1 of the Criminal Code), and the investigation called the unfinished financial transactions fraud attempts.
The UK considered all the participants of these operations to be the organizers and members of the OPS. According to the investigators, the OPS had a strict hierarchy with the distribution of roles, the community members were distinguished by unity, unity of goals and compliance with secrecy. They also, according to the UK, “had deep economic and legal knowledge”and were in trusting relationships with both businessmen and authorities.
Sergey Furgal’s lawyer Sergey Groza told RBC that the investigation notified Furgal about the investigation of the criminal case under articles 210 and 159, but did not present any case materials. “Yes, the investigation has arrested a lot of people, they say to everyone give evidence on Furgal and we will release you to house arrest, “he said.” Being the governor of the Khabarovsk Territory, he [Furgal] publicly asked at meetingsbanks help businesses all over the region. If the investigation objectively investigated and raised the records of the meetings, then everything that they are doing now, hiding behind the investigation, collapsed in one minute, ” the Storm added.
Nikolay Shukhov’s lawyer declined to comment. RBC sent a request to the Investigative Committee.
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