Customs clearance at the top: why they came with a search to the head of the FCS. Resignations on their own are unlikely to save the customs elite from an exciting trip to the bunk.
Undercover intrigues in the case of the former chief customs officer of the country.
In July last year, operatives from the Department of Internal Security (SSB) of the FSB came with searches to the then head of the Federal Customs Service (FCS) Andrey Belyaninov. Photos from Belyaninov's house, in which he, in a tracksuit, took out shoe boxes with cash from the mezzanine, instantly spread around the Internet and became the main topic of news releases on federal television.
At that time, few people had any doubts that the broadcast of the interior of the Belyaninov house in the context of news about the criminal case was standard information support for the further “landing”. These are the laws of the genre: if footage of a search is shown on TV, the hero of the plot will most likely change his mansion to the cell of the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center.
However, contrary to established practice, no charges were brought against Belyaninov - the next day he submitted his resignation, and information about the search disappeared from the news reports.
Since then, television has returned to the customs theme twice. First, on December 1, 2016, during the presidential address to the Federal Assembly, when Vladimir Putin appealed to the audience: “Unfortunately, it has become a practice for us to raise an information noise around the so-called high-profile cases. And often representatives of investigative and law enforcement agencies sin with this. I want to draw attention to this. The fight against corruption is not a show” (at that moment the camera snatched the figure of Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev). Then on December 23, during the annual press conference: “There was no case against Belyaninov. And the pre-investigation actions and searches thrown out in the media are unacceptable!”
Such a speech by the president left no doubt: the search in the house of Andrei Belyaninov, which led to his resignation, pursued a number of goals that were not brought to the attention of society.
Six months later, we fill in the gap and reveal the circumstances of the investigative actions in the house of the former head of the Federal Customs Service.
Why the search was carried out on the eve of the meeting between the head of the FCS and the president, how it led to the resignations of influential Lubyanka generals and the actual collapse of the most powerful FSB service, and why the ICR continues to investigate the case, the defendants of which may be people from the closest circle of the ex-head of customs.
... In early September last year, the senior investigator for especially important cases of the Main Investigation Department (GSU) of the TFR in Moscow, Alexei Yefimov, arrived at the Medved detention center. By that time, Lieutenant General of the Customs Service Alexei Shashaev, a close friend of the recently retired head of the Federal Customs Service Andrei Belyaninov, had been in custody for a little over a month and therefore perceived the young "big man" with anxiety. In July, the general was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of fraud, and before leaving for the colony, which was preceded by an appeal in the Moscow City Court, he did not count on another meeting with the investigating authorities.
However, this young investigator was very different from those who had recently sent him to prison: he politely apologized for the disturbance, inquired about his well-being and conditions of detention, offered to smoke.
Gradually, the conversation between the investigator and the prisoner on abstract topics began to flow into an interrogation, from which Shashaev understood the reason for Efimov’s visit: the Investigative Committee resumed the investigation of a criminal case concerning the execution of a contract for the development of complex software for the needs of the Federal Customs Service. Shashaev, who signed the certificate of completion under this contract, was to be interrogated as a witness.
Oleg Shashaev
The general did not have time to get upset by this circumstance - the very first questions on the merits of the case returned him to working condition. Difficult-to-pronounce phrases like "integrated components", which seemed to the investigator part of a tongue twister, for Shashaev were more like control words that trigger the thought process.
When the interrogated person realized that he was speaking with the investigator in different languages, he took a sheet of paper and began to draw a diagram. The lessons of artistic skill lasted more than three hours, during which investigator Efimov listened attentively to the general. “If I were free, I would have brought this matter to an end,” Shashaev said at the end of the interrogation, and neatly expressed his surprise at the suddenly re-emerging interest of the ICR in the information support of the customs authorities. And the investigator, who had previously preferred not to discuss the reasons for the resumption of the investigation, this time dropped for some reason: “You understand, the war of the special services continues.”
Conspiracy of the Generals
On July 21, 2016, the senior command staff of the 6th FSB CSS service carefully studied photographs of the land taken from a quadrocopter flying over the elite Konakovo district of the Tver region. There was a catastrophic lack of time even for the prompt installation of the object of interest, as some operatives of the FSB CSS would later explain - they were given less than a week to prepare the search.
The operational task itself also looked ridiculous - to seize everything that is of high value.
True, for the operas of the service, which took part in almost all the high-profile arrests of federal and regional officials in recent years, the rich interiors of huge mansions have long turned into mediocre decorations - without the help of experts, they have already learned to distinguish expensive paintings from fakes, and unique jewelry from cheap jewelry.
The object of the upcoming "raid", which was supposed to be the head of the FCS Andrei Belyaninov, also did not cause any emotions among the FSB officers. You never know these were - the former governor of the Sakhalin region Alexander Khoroshavin with kilograms of gold jewelry, the ex-head of the Komi Republic Yuri Gaizer with countless houses and apartments. As one of the officers explains, "everyone looks the same."
Another thing is the powerful generals of the Lubyanka, who dreamed of reaching out to the Glaali with their own multi-page certificates on "red forms" with an empty resolution - a signature on familiarization, without instructions on further actions. The country's foreign customs officer for the past four years. Over the past few months, at least twice they reported to the president about violations in the system of customs authorities, but in response they received
And on the eve of the head of the 6th service of the CSS FSB, Colonel Ivan Tkachev, they finally issued an order to prepare a search at Andrei Belyaninov's. The first steps of the 6th service of the FSB CSS were reminiscent of organizing the filming of a television reality show: both houses, apartments and Belyaninov’s office in the FCS building on Novozavodskaya Street were equipped with objective monitoring tools, and all contacts and movements of the “object” were reported online. up."
There seemed to be enough reasons for the FSB to invade the adjacent special service - the customs was shaken by high-profile corruption scandals, mainly related to the work of the North-Western Customs Administration (NWTU). A smuggling channel was opened in the zone of influence of NWTU, as a result of which some large business players ended up in custody.
It was the case of the illegal importation of several batches of alcohol under the guise of building sealant, which was investigated in the central office of the ICR, and should have become the basis for the production of operational and investigative actions in the FCS. And the senior investigator for especially important cases of the Main Investigative Directorate of the ICR Sergey Novikov, who often investigated cases together with the 6th service of the Internal Security Service of the FSB, signed a decree on the production of urgent investigative actions in the home of Andrei Belyaninov.
“There was no time to wait for the court's sanction for the search,” explains the FSB officer, referring to the short timeframe of the operation.
Exactly one week later, on July 27, 2016, Andrei Belyaninov was to have a personal meeting with President Vladimir Putin, at which the head of customs planned to discuss his future.
Andrey Belyaninov had several options for employment, according to a government official familiar with him and an employee of the presidential administration. The most probable is the management bodies of Vnesheconombank. “Andrey once mentioned that he could head the state bank if the president gives the go-ahead,” a federal official familiar with Belyaninov indirectly confirms this.
The transition of high-ranking security officials to the banking business has not been surprising for a long time, but in the case of Belyaninov it even looked logical. The head of the Federal Customs Service, who in the 1980s was responsible for the material support of the Soviet residency in East Germany through the First Main Directorate of the KGB, connected part of his life with the financial market: in the period 1992-1999 he headed REA-Bank and Novikombank, then founded his own Nefteprombank.
However, state-owned banks were far from the only potential place of work for Andrei Belyaninov. According to an employee of the presidential administration, for some time Belyaninov was considered for the post of head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which was preparing the resignation of Mikhail Fradkov.
“Belyaninov, if you put scandals aside, this is a biting and conflicting campaigner. Such a set of qualities corresponded to the priority tasks of the service - control of meetings of Russian officials abroad, search for their assets, and so on. And the president needs people who serve and report objective information, and do not bunch up and lead by the nose, ”says an employee of the presidential administration.
One way or another, Andrei Belyaninov did not have time to discuss a new job with Vladimir Putin: in the early morning of July 26 - the day before the scheduled meeting - three FSB task forces raided the building on Novozavodskaya Street and two country houses of the head of customs.
Andrey Belyaninov
"Button" under the president
Andrey Belyaninov, according to the FSB officer, was caught by special forces while fishing.
For several days now, the head of the FCS has been on official leave, which he spent at his dacha in Konakovo. The FSB was well aware of this, so at 5:00 a.m. they sent several Volkswagen minibuses there.
After a short altercation, Belyaninov was put into one of them and taken to the area of New Moscow, where his main place of residence was located. According to one of the operatives, both mobile phones were immediately confiscated from the head of customs, and upon arrival at the main dwelling, they began to inventory the main valuables - money (in total, more than 66 million rubles were seized in various currencies), four paintings, two icons and a rare The Holy Coronation book. Alexander II.
Photos of the seized money, jewelry and paintings, taken by one of the members of the task force, even before the end of the search, circled the Internet and federal TV channels: all day long news stories told about the luxurious life of another official who got into the FSB networks. Closer to midnight, television loosened its grip. “Apparently, the president turned on the TV for the first time at that time,” says an entrepreneur familiar with Belyaninov with irony.
“This is a rare case of disruption of the state mechanism. The “button” of the TV was turned on not just without the knowledge of the president, but in spite of him,” confirms an employee of the presidential administration and recalls Vladimir Putin’s reaction to searches during a message to the Federal Assembly: “In recent years, the president writes part of the texts during such events himself, by hand. This part [about Belyaninov] also wrote. No wonder. After such stories, people go to prison, and are not transferred to the personnel reserve. That's how it's done."
Photo of operational shooting during a search of the house of the head of the Federal Customs Service Belyaninov
Be that as it may, for Andrey Belyaninov this no longer mattered in principle. The game was played in one search - so a loyal member of the president's team turned into a person publicly rejected by the system.
Defeat of the "six"
Surprisingly enough, the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Andrei Belyaninov did take place on the appointed day. According to the FSB officer, because of this, investigator Novikov even had to postpone the interrogation of the head of the FCS for a day.
The result of an hour-long conversation with the president was the natural resignation of Belyaninov and the approval of the candidacy of the new head of customs, which was the presidential envoy to the Northwestern Federal District (NWFD) Vladimir Bulavin, a former subordinate of the Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev. In October, after the expected resignation of Mikhail Fradkov, the Foreign Intelligence Service was headed by State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, on whose initiative a Duma structure was created that studied abuses and violations in Belyaninov's department.
“Defeat comes after victory,” Andrei Belyaninov said at a farewell press conference.
The words of the now former head of the Russian customs turned out to be prophetic: within a month, eleven high-ranking officials left the law enforcement bloc - from the official representative of the TFR, Vladimir Markin, to one of the most influential generals of the Lubyanka, deputy head of the FSB FSB Oleg Feoktistov. The first became the deputy head of RusHydro, the second headed the security service of Rosneft.
It was Feoktistov, according to our sources, as the founder and curator of the 6th service of the FSB CSS, who was one of the organizers of the search at Andrei Belyaninov's house.
Having gained fame thanks to the investigations of a number of high-profile criminal cases, the victims of which were, among other things, the head of the operational support department of the Federal Drug Control Service Alexander Bulbov and the head of the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Denis Sugrobov, General Feoktistov was considered the main contender for filling the post of head of the FSB CSS.
Almost immediately after his departure, the 6th service supervised by him lost the status of the most dangerous division of the FSB: first, the "six" was deprived of the right to wiretap telephone conversations, and then - other fundamental powers in the implementation of operational-search activities.
“This service will only be engaged in ensuring the physical security of persons subject to state protection,” the FSB officer believes, adding that after a search in the house of the head of the FCS, operational support for most high-profile criminal cases began to be carried out by the 2nd service of the FSB FSB, which competed with the Six.
For some time, the prospects of the chief executor of investigative actions in the FCS, the head of the 6th service of the CSS FSB, Ivan Tkachev, also looked vague. Shortly before the fatal search, Colonel Tkachev, who received the nickname Soldier from his colleagues for unquestioning obedience to orders from his superiors, was considered the main contender for the post of head of Directorate "K" of the SEB FSB. This division is engaged in counterintelligence support of the credit and financial sphere and is considered the most significant in the system of economic security - it, in particular, oversees the banking business and customs authorities.
It was this department that, on duty, fought with the department of Andrei Belyaninov, engaged in deep operational developments of his subordinates and initiating criminal cases.
At the end of September, Tkachev's candidacy was nevertheless agreed upon by the presidential assistant for personnel, Yevgeny Shkolov, and the most famous special officer of the Lubyanka was retrained as the chief financial counterintelligence officer.
In his new capacity, he will investigate a criminal case, the threads of which will again lead him to the office of the head of the FCS.
close circle
It is not known how the fate of the former Soviet intelligence officer Alexei Shashaev would have developed if he had not met Andrei Belyaninov in the early 90s. A graduate of the Faculty of Applied Mathematics of the Higher School of the KGB, Shashaev, unlike most of his classmates, after the collapse of the Soviet Union did not go over to the side of free capital, but remained loyal to the state security agencies. At Lubyanka, according to retired FSB officers who knew him, he was remembered for his service discipline and naivety, unusual for a Chekist. “He always believed in formal logic. This belief still prevents him from understanding what he is sitting for,” one of them jokes.
With his future boss Andrey Belyaninov, Shashaev, the interlocutor continues, first met during a trip through the Moscow region to the Rozhayka River, where once a week people from the KGB liked to while away the weekend.
Quite quickly, the FSB officer Shashaev and the banker Belyaninov became friends. “They are both jokers. Wherever we rested - in the forest, on the Pirogovsky or Ruzsky reservoirs - Lesha and Andrey turned on the audience. Lesha was a full-time guitarist, Andrey loved to sing, ”recalls an acquaintance of Shashaeva.
Andrei Belyaninov and Alexei Shashaev during one of the campaigns. Moscow region. Photo from Shashaev's personal archive.
In 2001, friendship grew into official relations: Alexei Shashaev, in the status of a staff member of the FSB, took the post of first deputy head of the information technology department of Rosoboronexport, which shortly before was headed by Andrei Belyaninov.
And in 2006, he followed his friend to the FCS, taking the post of head of the Main Directorate of Information Technology (GUIT), where he was responsible for the technical support of the department.
Formally, in customs, Shashaev was subordinate to Belyaninov's KGB colleague Vladimir Malinin, but in fact he worked with an eye on the Lubyanka that sent him. A year later, Shashaev will become the first career Chekist to take off his shoulder straps as an FSB colonel and transfer to the customs service (where he will soon rise to the rank of lieutenant general).
“Just at that time, Belyaninov was struggling with the guardianship of counterintelligence officers, seeking the abolition of the institution of seconded employees in relation to the FCS. At extended boards [of the FSB], he repeatedly stated that colleagues from the adjacent service interfere with the implementation of the tasks set by the president,” recalls the former high-ranking FSB officer.
It should be noted that Andrey Belyaninov's complaints were not without foundation - the FSB officers formed the backbone of the law enforcement structures of the Main Directorate for Combating Smuggling and the Anti-Corruption Department of the Federal Customs Service.
Having achieved the expulsion of seconded Chekists, Belyaninov closed the entire fight against smuggling on himself, in particular, depriving the FSB of the operational and technical capabilities of customs. “By the end of 2011, the Lubyanka had completely lost its influence on the processes inside the customs,” states the ex-FSB officer.
At the same time, the interlocutor continues, the special service stepped up measures to identify crimes of corruption in the customs authorities: “The first sign of an impending storm was the activation of Voronin (the former head of the “K” Department of the SEB FSB. - A.S.), who was associated with Belyaninov in general friendly relations. When Belyaninov expelled seconded employees, he did not touch Voronin's relative, who served in the USTM FCS (Department of Special Technical Measures. - A.S.).
The mobilization of the security forces touched even the State Duma, which is loyal to the FCS, within which a coordinating council was created on the problems of foreign economic activity. According to the former State Duma deputy, the initiative to create the council came from speaker Sergei Naryshkin, and the FSB was engaged in “substantial content” for the work of parliamentarians.
In the spring of 2012, a series of inspections and arrests began of employees of the Risk and Operational Control Department of the Federal Customs Service, the Logistics Department, the Central Customs Administration and regional customs, as well as cargo carriers associated with them.
The 7th department of the Directorate "K" of the SEB FSB, which directly oversaw the work of the customs authorities, quickly became the department's record holder in the number of criminal cases initiated on the basis of the materials of its operational employees.
Sometimes security officers sold operational information through colleagues from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to former employees of the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, based on the materials of the FSB, in the summer of 2012, on suspicion of commercial bribery, they detained an adviser to the subordinate FCS FSUE ROSTEK Alexander Romanov, a native of the 9th KGB department and a longtime friend of Andrey Belyaninov.
According to investigators, Romanov, together with the management of one of the ROSTEK branches, illegally charged shippers money for the smooth and speedy clearance of their goods. In 2014, Romanov was sentenced to five years in prison. And although the name of Belyaninov was not mentioned at the stage of preliminary and judicial investigation, and after the arrest of Romanov, he himself conducted a tough official check, it became clear: the security forces headed for the environment of the head of the FCS.
Shashaev's case
In the fall of 2013, the 7th department of the Directorate "K" of the SEB FSB received operational information about possible violations in the execution of a state contract for the supply of Oracle software for the needs of the Federal Customs Service.
The initial price of the work was more than 322 million rubles and did not change during the auction, which served as a signal to the Chekists. The formation of the cost of work and the development of technical requirements for the participants in the auction was carried out by the Main Department of the Federal Customs Service, headed by Alexei Shashaev. The only allowed participant was SBL-Technologies LLC, which received the status of the exclusive distributor of the software product from the Russian representative office of Oracle.
A year after the conclusion of this contract, Vyacheslav Lysakov, director of SBL-Technologies LLC, applied to the FSB with a statement about a price collusion between the customer and his company, recognizing the damage caused to the state in the amount of more than 100 million rubles. According to Lysakov, familiar entrepreneurs Igor Beregovsky and Stanislav Sorokin approached him with a proposal to take part in the auction "on favorable terms". At the same time, as Lysakov said, businessmen informed him of the need to transfer 15% of the contract amount as a “kickback” for FCS officials.
Shortly before this, Lysakov himself had problems with law enforcement officers - and his statement looked more like part of a deal, and not a confession.
FSB operatives, using their applicant, organized several controlled meetings with Beregovsky and Sorokin, at which Lysakov, equipped with a complex of audio and video recording equipment, became interested in the recipients of the “kickback”. During these meetings, the names of Shashaev, Malinin and Belyaninov were called. As Lysakov later explains, he acted on the instructions of the employees of the 7th department of the Directorate "K" of the SEB FSB.
However, neither the results of the controlled meetings, nor the reports of wiretapping of telephone conversations gave the counterintelligence officers exhaustive evidence of the involvement of the FCS employees. Nevertheless, on December 13, a criminal case was opened in the Main Investigative Committee of the ICR for Moscow on the fact of fraud, in which Beregovsky and Sorokin were detained.
As the investigation established, the real cost of the work amounted to just over 180 million rubles, and part of the difference received was distributed by the participants in the crime under a fictitious subcontract concluded with a garbage company.
An important detail: the calculation of the real cost of the work at the request of the FSB was made by the Yekaterinburg CJSC ACS.
A week later, Yelena Soboleva, the head of the planning department of the GUIT, was detained on suspicion of abuse of office, who, according to the investigation, gave the two defendants information about the parameters of the future contract that created competitive advantages for SBL-Technologies.
Almost a year later, in October 2014, Alexey Shashaev was among the suspects. According to investigators, the general prepared a budget request for financial support for the activities of the Main Directorate of Information Technologies of the Federal Customs Service, "deliberately inflating the costs of supplying and supporting information products." The only evidence of the guilt of the head of the GUIT was the testimony of Vyacheslav Lysakov, who, ironically, turned from an applicant into a suspect, and businessman Stanislav Sorokin, who entered into a pre-trial agreement.
The announcement of the verdict for all the defendants in the case, scheduled by the Tverskoy District Court for July 28, 2016, was postponed for an hour. When the judge began to read the terms, Dmitry Medvedev's order to terminate the powers of Andrei Belyaninov had already been signed.
6th lot
In November 2015, when Aleksey Shashaev was already under investigation, another search was carried out at the GUIT FCS.
More than two dozen employees of the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the TFR seized documents and electronic media related to a contract for the development and implementation of a complex software product that automates customs workflows.
Within the walls of the FCS, this contract received the capacious name "6th Lot". A criminal case on the grounds of the same fraud was initiated against unidentified officials of the Federal Customs Service and the heads of the system developer, I-Teco CJSC. The applicant was the same CJSC ACS, whose calculations a year earlier allowed the FSB to convict General Shashaev's GUIT of price conspiracy.
The investigating authorities did not publicize this case, the investigation of which was suspended until the resignation of Andrei Belyaninov, and resumed a month later. “After the ugly dismissal of Belyaninov, it was decided to investigate the case quietly,” admits the FSB officer.
The essence of this criminal case is as follows.
In 2009, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), within the framework of the program for the development of the Russian customs authorities, allocated EUR 14 million to the Federal Customs Service for the creation of a software product that would automate the main customs workflows.
An employee of the Federal Customs Service, who participated in the development of technical requirements for the program, describes this product figuratively: “Imagine a building - a foundation, four walls, a ceiling. This was the technical support of customs more than ten years ago. With the development of technology, “extensions” began to appear - software tools that simplify the activities of customs. Automation of all processes in the department, which brought more than half of the funds to the revenue side of the budget, was inevitable. But as a result, the "development" led to chaos - there were about 80 software tools in the FCS ... Then it was decided to reduce the number of programs to the ten most significant ones and tie them to a single integration "tire".
The winner of the open auction held by the IBRD was one of the leaders in the market of integration products - I-Teco CJSC. In 2013, the product delivered by the developers was accepted into the balance of the Federal Customs Service - Alexey Shashaev signed the act of work performed, and Vladimir Malinin, chairman of the supervisory board of the program, approved the acceptance.
However, customs officers did not begin to introduce the product into the FCS system, which was immediately noticed by the Accounts Chamber and the FSB.
“This is the problem of most control bodies - they study the investigation, but do not want to see the reasons,” the FCS officer complains and explains the essence of disagreements with law enforcement officers using another example: “At one time, a checkpoint was built in the Orenburg region, on the border with Kazakhstan - a complex of administrative buildings with a platform for car inspection. The construction had to spend up to half a billion rubles. Shortly before the commissioning of the facility, the Customs Union came: the collection of customs duties for the circulation of goods between Russia and Kazakhstan was canceled - the checkpoint was not needed. When we were accused of misuse of the budget, we shrugged our shoulders: who knew that Putin, Nazarbayev and Lukashenko would invent the EAEU and abolish the border? The situation is the same here, except that the object is not physical, but virtual. For four years, the rules for structuring data have changed utterly, and the developer created the product taking into account the old technical requirements. We appealed to the IBRD with a request to adjust the terms of reference in accordance with the new standards, but the bank's management did not go forward.”
When a credit burden of 14 million euros fell on Russia, the government ordered the FCS to modernize the resulting software product.
The competition for the modernization of one of the ten components - the management of customs revenues - was held only in 2015, and the same ACS CJSC became its winner. However, when the term of the contract was coming to an end, the management of ACS turned to the FSB. The essence of the statement was as follows: the FCS handed over “empty disks” to the contractor for modernization, which means that the money allocated for development was simply stolen. The FCS assures that the program is working, as evidenced by trial runs carried out in the presence of FSB officers.
According to the TFR, the software is currently undergoing a computer-technical examination in the Ministry of Justice, the results of which determine the fate of the criminal case. However, according to the FSB officer, the position of the investigation remains unchanged so far - there is a crime, which means that suspects should appear in the criminal case. The main "signatories" - Alexei Shashaev and Vladimir Malinin - are under attack.
Harbinger of the Storm
The new head of the Federal Customs Service Vladimir Bulavin over the past six months has greatly changed the attitude towards customs on the part of law enforcement agencies. Having canceled several insignificant orders of Andrey Belyaninov, Bulavin revived the activities of the public advisory council, sent an unscheduled check to the wrongful SZTU, and most importantly, returned the seconded FSB officers to the customs. Moreover, he himself was the first to be sent - Bulavin headed the customs in the status of an acting general of the FSB. The second was his deputy at the embassy in the Northwestern Federal District Sergey Seryshev, who replaced Vladimir Malinin.
However, in the process of personnel rotation, the new head of customs did not get rid of some of Belyaninov's former subordinates, as his colleagues from the FSB insisted on. Moreover, in October last year, Vladimir Bulavin sent a submission to the presidential administration for the awarding of Vladimir Malinin with the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, IV degree.
According to the FSB officer, this “shocked” the Lubyanka generals: “The head of the K department, Tkachev, personally tried to convince Bulavin not to do this, but was not heard.”
The last controversial decision of the new head of customs was the cancellation of Andrey Belyaninov's order to ban the customs clearance of certain goods in electronic declaration centers (ECD).
It should be recalled that the introduction of the CED at one time allowed the FCS to separate physical inspection of goods and its electronic declaration into different regions. So, the goods, for example, were imported through checkpoints in Vladivostok, and declared at the Shchelkovo CED in the Moscow Region.
This led to the disorganization of the work of the customs authorities: the employees of the checkpoints did not see the declaration, and the CED inspectors did not see the actually imported goods.
In a fairly short period of time, the FCS itself began to notice an increase in cases of false declaration of goods. Through the port regions of the country - Vladivostok, St. Petersburg and Novorossiysk - smuggling poured in: under the guise of building materials and household items, expensive electronics, clothes and jewelry were transported on an industrial scale.
The budget began to lose billions of customs duties.
The FSB, in turn, reported to the country's leadership that they were unable to stop this: the lack of a full-fledged exchange of information between checkpoints and the CED, coupled with the difference in time zones between regions, deprived law enforcement officers of the chance to document the fact of smuggling and, as a result, initiate a criminal case.
Therefore, in 2015, Andrey Belyaninov sent a teletype message to the heads of the CED with a ban on declaring the most popular types of goods. The instructions of this teletype message were canceled by the directive of Vladimir Bulavin on February 10 of this year, at 23.20 Moscow time.
Several FSB operatives, who got acquainted with the directive thanks to journalists, were surprised by the decision of the head of the FCS. “This will inevitably lead to a wave of smuggling in the ports of the country in the very near future,” says one of them. “There will be a new aggravation in relations with customs,” predicts another operative.
Thus ended this round of struggle for the chairs of the chief of customs and the head of foreign intelligence. However, not all trump cards have been played yet.
However - and this is admitted by the officers themselves - this time the war of the special services will unfold soon inside the Lubyanka, part of the clans of which Vladimir Bulavin delegated to the customs. But who they are - viewers of federal TV channels will not know. There will be fewer TV shows.
Omsk trace: customs "Octopus" or just a family business?
The extraordinary business talents of the children and wives of individual heads of the Federal Customs Service of Russia, as well as their Omsk roots. We are dealing with a scandal.
On Thursday, July 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the head of the Federal Customs Service Andrey Belyaninov (on the picture). This was preceded by information in the federal media about searches at Belyaninov’s house, as well as at the place of residence and work of the president of Arsenal Insurance Company LLC. Sergei Lobanov. The latter may be directly related to Omsk.
This advanced and very successful young man, according to the federal media, is the founder of at least 15 companies that are closely connected with the FCS of Russia in their activities. In addition, he was an adviser to the now ex-head of the department, Belyaninov.
First of all, we drew attention to the fact that the aforementioned Sergey Lobanov apparently lived in Omsk, since in the materials of the SPARK system his TIN begins with 55. Indeed, among the graduates of Omsk State University there is Sergey Yuryevich Lobanov, who with a high degree of probability is the son of Sergey Viktorovich Lobanov. The biography of the latter, it seems to us, is very typical for modern Russia and can largely explain the essence of what is happening in the capital's offices and country houses.
www.pnp.ru
The elder Lobanov lived and worked in Omsk, and also served with Belyaninov and, after his retirement, continued to work under him at Novikombank OJSC. But, according to Muscovites, the families of Belyaninov and Lobanov became especially close after the next transfer of both to the civil service in the Federal Customs Service of Russia, where the latter was appointed to the general position - head of the Main Organizational and Inspection Department. Many, including journalists, at that time called Sergei Lobanov "the right hand" of the boss.
Omsk’s customs career was swift and cloudless, but a terrible thing happened: the security service of the FSB of Russia revealed that his father and son, as well as his wife, by the way, an employee of the presidential administration of the Russian Federation, had special coupons issued by the traffic police of Moscow for personal, very expensive cars. The issuance of such coupons is allowed only to individual official vehicles of special law enforcement agencies. Soon after the public scandal, Lobanov Sr. became Belyaninov's adviser, taking his son into the apparatus.
website
Omsk University could be proud of the outstanding success in the business of its graduate: he contributed more than 630 million rubles to the authorized capital of the 15 companies mentioned above. And this is only the first cut of his business empire, since Arsenal Insurance Company LLC has established four firms, Lama Investment Company LLC has already 12, and Arsenal-Capital LLC - 11 firms, etc. Thus , 30-year-old Sergey Lobanov is the owner of a huge number of firms, insurance companies, banks. But who is the actual owner?
Maybe someone who owns a house on the banks of the Ruza River with an area of just over 1600 square meters. meters, and his wife, who received a legal profit in 2015 in her own company that leases real estate, in the amount of more than 46 million rubles. But the cost of the Belyaninovs' house in the Moscow region exceeds several hundred million rubles at market prices, and judging by the profits, her own property, which she so successfully rents out, is already worth more than 1 billion rubles.
It is authentically known that the son of Sergei Lobanov and the daughter of Belyaninov Svetlana conducted a joint business, and the evil scribblers in the yellow publications gossip about the supposedly warmer relations of the young. A few years ago, there were rumors among Omsk businessmen about a fabulously rich young Muscovite, Sergei Lobanov, who had deposited several hundred million rubles of his enterprise's money on deposits in Omsk banks.
Therefore, the money that Belyaninov extracted from a shoe box during operational shooting in the hallway of his house is, perhaps, pocket money for weekly needs: go to a restaurant, play in a casino, again fly somewhere to sunbathe. There remains a ghostly hope that the “ice has broken”: political will has appeared in the country, and our Russian “commissar Cataño” will put everything in its place, but the name of Belyaninov’s daughter Svetlana - Serdyukova - returns to real life again.
Yesterday a Moscow court sentenced a lieutenant general of the customs service to 6.5 years in a strict regime colony for receiving a 30% kickback from supplier firms. If we estimate the scale of the family business of only two people involved in the scandal, then it probably amounts to tens of billions, but the damage to the Russian budget from the “selfless service” of customs “werewolves in uniform” seems to be in the hundreds of billions.
And more important. The Communist Chekists Belyaninov and Lobanov must have watched the outstanding film “White Sun of the Desert” and completely forgot the words of customs officer Pavel Vereshchagin: “I don’t take bribes - I’m offended by the state!”.
As a result of the scandal, the head of the Federal Customs Service, Andrei Belyaninov, was dismissed by Dmitry Medvedev's order - he will be replaced by the presidential envoy to the Northwestern Federal District, Vladimir Bulavin. What information led the FSB to the leadership of the customs, who gave what evidence against Andrei Belyaninov, what new smuggling schemes were revealed during the searches - in the investigation of Novaya Gazeta.
Before the scandal with the arrests of high-ranking officials of the Investigative Committee had died down, new shocks occurred in the power bloc of the country: employees of the Department of Internal Security (CSB) of the FSB came with searches to the head of the Federal Customs Service (FCS) Andrey Belyaninov. He, as well as two of his deputies - Ruslan Davydov and Andrei Strukov - and businessman Sergei Lobanov, close to the FCS, were visited by operatives as part of a criminal investigation into the smuggling of alcoholic beverages.
The operation, prepared, according to our information, just one night before the start of the searches, ended in the best traditions of documentaries from the 90s: with video footage of a luxurious general’s palace, with photographs of cash laid out on the table, with a “purse businessman” who left the country (who have to decide whether to return to their homeland or wait for an announcement on the international wanted list). Nothing changes except props: instead of Xerox boxes full of money, shoe boxes appear.
In this investigation
- It all started with cognac
- Courvoisierunder the guise of sealant
- "Express Smuggling"
- Moldovan trace
sad holiday
July 14 Andrey Belyaninov celebrated his 59th birthday. The closest people were invited to a gala dinner at the restaurant "Bakinski Dvorik" on Rusakovskaya Street: relatives, colleagues, classmates. Throughout the evening, the guests raised their glasses to the health of the birthday boy, recalled his failed career as an actor (as a child, Belyaninov starred in the film Children of Don Quixote), and shared funny stories.
Andrei Belyaninov, according to his acquaintances, is an official atypical for modern Russia: very open, sarcastic. Many acquaintances call Belyaninov perhaps the most sincere person in the federal executive bodies.
“He was like that in his youth - a joker, a rake. Sometimes it seems that in front of you is an adult child - naive, sometimes with some completely teenage undertakings. Once we were walking along the street, so he saw a group of some brawlers and offered to fight with them. “You take on those, I take these!” - speaks. They explain to him: “Andrey, calm down. You are healthy and we are not. And if we win, how will the police officers feel when they check your documents at the police station?” Thank God, they dissuaded me, ”recalls an entrepreneur familiar with Belyaninov with a laugh.
“He loves to drive himself. On the windshield hangs an insert "without the right to search" - and enough not to be disturbed. Of course, he loves himself, but he definitely doesn’t feel pleasure from the lackey attitude towards himself. ”
Another acquaintance, a federal official, also notes Belyaninov’s light, sometimes frivolous, attitude to life: parade ground. And Yuryich, on the contrary, is calm, relaxed.
Another friend of Belyaninov tells how he avoids the bodyguards assigned to him in every possible way: “He likes to drive himself. On the windshield hangs an insert "without the right to search" - and enough not to be disturbed. Of course, he loves himself, but he definitely doesn’t feel pleasure from the lackey attitude towards himself. ”
The State Duma deputy, who knows Belyaninov "at a distance", sees completely different qualities in him - excessive emotionality, sometimes turning into rudeness, complete disrespect for others, including colleagues in the power bloc.
“Somehow, employees of the Investigative Committee conducted searches in the offices of ordinary employees of the Federal Customs Service. The next day, Andrey Yuryevich came to Bastrykin - and literally from the doorway: “You, Alexander Ivanovich, where are you climbing? I have my own secret service! You have something to show, so show it, but don’t interfere with our work,” recalls the deputy. According to the interlocutor, Belyaninov allowed himself the same thing with regard to without five minutes the former head of the Department "K" of the SEB FSB Viktor Voronin, whose subordinates repeatedly clashed with employees of the Main Directorate for Combating Smuggling (GUBK) of the FCS. “At the same time, when Voronin started having problems, Belyaninov said: “This is my friend. We fight, but I support him." It was unexpected,” adds the deputy.
... “I wish you, Andrey Yuryevich, Siberian health, Caucasian longevity and St. Petersburg happiness,” one of the guests raised a toast to the birthday man to the general laughter.
St. Petersburg's happiness did not happen: two weeks later, in the offices of the head of the FCS, as well as two of his deputies - Ruslan Davydov (supervises the law enforcement unit in the service) and Andrei Strukov (deputy chairman of the FCS, supervises SZTU) - the Department of Internal Security (USB) of the FSB conducted searches within criminal case initiated by the Main Investigation Department (GSU) of the TFR this spring on the fact of smuggling of alcoholic products (Article 200.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Having seized the documents at the workplaces of the customs authorities, the FSB operatives went to two country estates of Andrei Belyaninov, located in the village of Konakovo, Tver Region, and the village of Bachurino in New Moscow.
In the latter, in addition to the luxurious interiors traditional for Russian senior civil servants, the operational-investigative group found a large amount of money: in total, at the exchange rate today - 66 million rubles. Later, Andrey Belyaninov, who personally in a home tracksuit took out shoeboxes full of cash from the mezzanine, will explain that this money is “family savings”.
Andrey Belyaninov - about the recipe for official "longevity" (10 years as head of the Federal Customs Service): "I'm like that traffic cop who does not raise his baton - I don't bother anyone to violate. If I interfered, would I have worked so long?
After carrying out the necessary investigative actions at the addresses of residence, Belyaninov, accompanied by employees of the FSB CSS, was taken for interrogation to the TFR, to Technical Lane, where he once came to swear with Bastrykin.
They released the head of the FCS, according to his acquaintances, after midnight - in the status of a witness.
CaseCourvoisier
A criminal case on the fact of smuggling of alcoholic products was initiated on March 29, 2016. The reason was the materials of the FSB CSS officers, who revealed in the Ust-Luga port of St. Petersburg illegal importation of a batch of elite cognac Courvoisier 1912 from the port of Hamburg under the guise of construction sealant. Subsequently, this cognac was supposed to replenish the bar card of the Buddha-Bar restaurant owned by the famous St. Petersburg businessman Mikhalchenko (now under arrest).
The damage incurred by the Russian budget from the submission of a fictitious customs declaration, which allowed the attackers to underestimate the amount of customs duties, as the investigation calculates, hardly exceeded 1.8 million rubles. But despite the insignificant amount of damage, in early April, FSB CSS operatives detained four people on suspicion of smuggling alcoholic products: Anatoly Kindzersky, deputy general director of Kontrail Logistic North-West LLC, Ilya Pichko, general director of South-Eastern Trading Company LLC, head the security services of the holding company "Forum" Boris Korevsky and - from the second time - the owner of the latter, an influential St. Petersburg businessman Dmitry Mikhalchenko.
All four were placed in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center. According to an FSB officer familiar with the details of this criminal case, CSS operatives have been developing Mikhalchenko since 2015 (on September 25, the Moscow City Court authorized wiretapping of the businessman’s phones), but only in the case of Courvoisier brandy did they receive “irrefutable evidence of his participation in smuggling.”
“The damage may seem small, but the main thing is the documented fact of participation in these processes. Where there is cognac, there are also large batches of clothing and electronics. This is yet to be tested. As for the “alcohol”, the investigation was consolidated by a good evidence base - there are good results of wiretapping. There were also tacit audio recordings of the object - to understand its plans, ”says the FSB officer.
The hunt for Dmitry Mikhalchenko was not accidental - this businessman, who controlled the lion's share of import flows through the North-Western Customs Administration, was considered a person from the inner circle of the former head of the FSO, Yevgeny Murov, who left his post at the end of May this year. Murov, in turn, emphasize several unrelated sources in law enforcement agencies, maintained comradely relations with the already mentioned FSB general Voronin, former deputy chairman of the TFR Vasily Piskarev (in early May, his powers were terminated by presidential decree) and, finally, for the time being Acting head of the FCS Andrey Belyaninov.
Petr Sarukhanov / Novaya Gazeta
... The smuggling of Courvoisier cognac, according to the FSB officer, was carried out as follows: in early spring, Dmitry Mikhalchenko allegedly instructed his subordinate Boris Korevsky to find a company that would deliver alcohol for the needs of his restaurant with minimal cash costs at the border.
Korevsky allegedly approached the co-owner of ULS-Global Igor Khavronov with this proposal, but he refused - their group imports expensive clothes, but not alcohol. (ULS-Global is a network of enterprises with a fleet of 350 trucks, an air fleet of 8 cargo aircraft of the Airbus A300-B4 and A310-300F brands and its own ferry Ferry 1.)
Last month, Novaya Gazeta wrote about this structure and its relationship with other participants in the transportation market ( see No. 65 of June 20, 2016 - "Smuggling Stars"). Then, let me remind you, we cited excerpts from the letters we received from the carrier Dmitry Zarubin, who is in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center on charges of evading customs payments (Article 194 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and creating an OPS (Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
Zarubin, in particular, noted that several groups of influence allegedly operated on the market of commodity smuggling in the NWTU zone - in addition to ULS-Global, these were supposedly: Dmitry Mikhalchenko, Boris Avakyan, an official of the St. Petersburg department of Rosreestr, and Kontrail Logistic North-West LLC.
The representative of the latter, businessman Anatoly Kindzersky, as a result, according to operatives, took up the transportation of cognac for Dmitry Mikhalchenko.
An FSB officer familiar with the details of the criminal case notes: Kindzersky and Dmitry Mikhalchenko were allegedly two independent players in the “commodity smuggling” market, although both had the status of “untouchables” (as Dmitry Zarubin called them in his letters).
Kindzersky, like Mikhalchenko, had strong support from the leadership of the Federal Customs Service. “In September 2015, three operatives of the FCS GUBK — Dergachev, Muravyov and Starostin — began developing Kindzersky for several shipments at the Baltic customs. After this was reported to the management, the development was curtailed, and the operatives were fired within one day, ”the FSB operative gives an example.
According to him, Kindzersky at that time had not only useful business connections, but also family ones - his own uncle allegedly worked as an adviser to the president of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, and even turned to him for help when his nephew was detained. But Sechin showed integrity: immediately after the initiation of a criminal case, his uncle from Rosneft was fired, the FSB official concludes.
Deal with investigators
In early summer, Anatoly Kindzersky concluded a pre-trial agreement with the investigation. He became the first and so far the only defendant in the case who agreed to cooperate (Dmitry Mikhalchenko does not give any evidence at all). According to our sources in the FSB, it was thanks to the testimony of Kindzersky that the operational-investigative group received grounds for the recent searches in the FCS.
“Kindzersky showed not only the circumstances of the import of cognac for Mikhalchenko, but also agreed to expose the people who patronized him,” says the FSB officer. Which of the words of the deputy director of "Kontrail" could jeopardize the whole head of the secret service?
According to the testimony of Anatoly Kindzersky, cited by the FSB officer, Kontrail was able to enlist the support of the FCS leadership thanks to the founder of Translogistic LLC Sergey Bausov: “Bausov is a person from Andrey Belyaninov’s close circle. He even got a job in the Union of Veterans of the Customs Service, although he never served in the FCS. Everything to ensure that his contacts with the leadership of the FCS did not arouse suspicion. Bausov served as a “liaison officer” between Kindzersky and the head of the FCS, for which he regularly received a salary.
Bausov, according to the interlocutor, during interrogation at the Main Investigative Committee of the ICR on Tuesday evening, spoke about how and for what purposes he introduced Kindzersky to Belyaninov.
Another "emissary" of the head of the FCS, with whom Anatoly Kindzersky, according to testimony, had to communicate, is businessman Sergei Lobanov.
Lobanov, according to the FSB officer, can be considered the closest person to Andrei Belyaninov: “In his testimony, Kindzersky admitted that Lobanov was allegedly introduced to him as a person responsible for delicate work - ensuring schemes for the import and export of goods and making mutual settlements.”
Unlike Sergei Bausov, the operatives failed to catch Sergei Lobanov at home or at work - on Tuesday morning he was supposed to return to Moscow from Lithuania, but for some reason he was delayed.
Lobanov
Sergey Lobanov is only 33 years old, but he can be considered a fully established businessman: he runs a large insurance company, and also owns shares in commercial banks in Russia and Moldova.
Lobanov, in the opinion of an entrepreneur familiar with him, should owe his triumphant ascent to his father, a former employee of the KGB of the USSR, who served together with the future head of the Federal Customs Service in the same residency in the GDR.
At the end of 2011, Sergei Lobanov first appeared among the founders of the Arsenal insurance company, which two years later became the official insurer of cargo carriers from the Federal Customs Service. This happened after Andrey Belyaninov, by his order, canceled the so-called TIR Carnets (previously they were used by carriers), and instead introduced mandatory insurance certificates, which Arsenal began to sell.
According to the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption Dmitry Gorovtsov, one of the most consistent and harsh critics of Andrei Belyaninov, “with one order, an entire segment of the road transportation market was intercepted.” “I have repeatedly drawn the attention of law enforcement and control bodies to this egregious fact: the FSB, the TFR, the FAS ... The last time, in April of this year, at a reception with the chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, I once again focused on the fact that people associated with the FCS enrich themselves unjustly. Where does this money go? Which banks? I hope the investigation will answer these questions,” says Gorovtsov.
However, the interests of Sergei Lobanov are not limited to the insurance of cargo carriers, as the official representative of the TFR Vladimir Markin noted, the young businessman "owns at least 15 companies." But the most important assets of the entrepreneur are stakes in the Russian Nefteprombank and the Moldovan bank Victoria.
Structures associated with Lobanov acquired 40% of the shares in Victoria from the companies of the Moldovan banker Veaceslav Platon. Intermediary in the transaction, according to an entrepreneur familiar with Lobanov, was another Moldovan businessman - Ilan Shor, the largest owner of the Duty Free chain of stores in his country.
Both Platon and Shor are now under investigation in the pre-trial detention center in Chisinau - both are suspected of economic crimes.
“Sergei had only one deal with Platon, but Shor can be considered his full-fledged business partner in Moldova,” says an acquaintance of Lobanova.
Shor and Lobanov, it must be said, could become partners in Russia - last year they wanted to lease land adjacent to international automobile checkpoints for the construction of 45 Duty Free stores on them. Andrei Belyaninov came up with the idea of allocating these plots and transferring them to commercial companies, but this initiative did not find support in the government.
Ilan Shor seems to be familiar with Belyaninov himself, says an acquaintance of the latter. According to him, they were allegedly introduced at one time by Kozhin ( former head of the Presidential Administration.— A.S.). Shor ensured the centralization of the supply of Moldovan fruits and vegetables through the Lobanov channels.”
“Shor is the key to Lobanov’s money in Moldova,” the FSB officer adds, but suggests not rushing to find them: “Now it’s important to understand what mechanisms allow unscrupulous carriers to deceive the Russian budget.”
According to him, in addition to the well-known schemes for illegally declaring goods (when goods with a high customs duty are transported under the guise of goods with a low customs duty), the so-called “express delivery”, introduced by Andrey Belyaninov’s order in November 2014, has recently become a very popular destination.
Its essence is as follows: individual companies were endowed by the FCS with exclusive rights to duty-free import of consumer goods ordered by Russian citizens in foreign online stores. Customs declarations in the case of such imports are not filled out, and the only document submitted to the customs authority is the register of goods customers.
Photo: RIA Novosti
According to sources from the FSB, after the introduction of this innovation, part of the smuggling flows moved just to “express delivery”: “Let's say there is a company that has received the right to duty-free import of goods from the Federal Customs Service. You enter into an agreement with a conditional Italian forwarder who has an agreement (or maybe not) with some Italian online store. Bayer ( buyer. — A.S.) the boutique purchases a commercial batch of clothes weighing 5,000 kg for a Russian store, but the formal recipient of these clothes at Sheremetyevo is a company that has received authority from the FCS. Here you don’t even have to take risks by making false declarations - just a register of customers is transferred to the customs authority (this is a table in which random full names can be indicated, without passport data, without signatures, at the rate of 20-30 kg of clothing per person) and so the goods are cleared."
According to the interlocutor, the cost of "express delivery" services for a consignment of goods weighing 5,000 kg is 90,000 euros. “And this money can only be received by those whom the FCS management has given the right to such transportation,” he says.
This topic can also be raised as part of the ongoing case of smuggling alcoholic beverages, says the FSB officer, since CSS operatives seized an “unofficial report” from one of these carriers, Tamarix Logistics LLC (June 2) in the office of Sergey Lobanov’s insurance company Arsenal 2015, Belyaninov included this company among other organizations entitled to engage in "express delivery")
Resignation
Photo of operational shooting during a search of the house of the head of the Federal Customs Service Belyaninov. Photo: Gazeta.ru
Immediately after the work in the FCS, there were reports in the media about the impending resignation of the head of the department, Andrei Belyaninov. Soon the head of the legal department of the FCS, Larisa Cherkesova, denied this information. According to our information, the high-ranking customs officer himself was not going to resign - he was not embarrassed by any suspicions (even if they did not result in the relevant investigative decisions) about the participation of the FCS leadership in smuggling, nor by the defiant photographs of millions of "family savings" hidden in boxes from under shoes. However, on the morning of July 28, Dmitry Medvedev, by his order, dismissed Belyaninov, appointing Vladimir Bulavin, presidential envoy to the Northwestern Federal District, to the post of head of the Federal Customs Service.
According to a federal official familiar to us, once at an interdepartmental meeting attended by generals from the FSB Directorate "K", the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General's Office, Andrei Belyaninov, responding to a colleague's sarcastic remark about the recipe for "longevity" (he has headed the FCS for more than 10 years), allegedly spread his hands: “I’m like that traffic cop who doesn’t raise his baton – I don’t bother anyone to violate. If I interfered, would I have worked so long?
It seems that the customs general did not pay attention to the fact that many of those whom he "did not interfere with" themselves lost their posts or went to pre-trial detention centers.
Before the scandal with the arrests of high-ranking officials of the Investigative Committee had died down, new shocks occurred in the power bloc of the country: employees of the Department of Internal Security (CSB) of the FSB came with searches to the head of the Federal Customs Service (FCS) Andrey Belyaninov. He, as well as two of his deputies - Ruslan Davydov and Andrei Strukov - and businessman Sergei Lobanov, close to the FCS, were visited by operatives as part of a criminal investigation into the smuggling of alcoholic beverages.
The operation, prepared, according to our information, just one night before the start of the searches, ended in the best traditions of documentaries from the 90s: with video footage of a luxurious general's palace, with photographs of cash laid out on the table, with a "purse businessman" who left the country (who have to decide whether to return to their homeland or wait for an announcement on the international wanted list). Nothing changes except props: instead of Xerox boxes full of money, shoe boxes appear.
As a result of the scandal, the head of the Federal Customs Service, Andrei Belyaninov, was dismissed by Dmitry Medvedev's order - he will be replaced by the presidential envoy in the Northwestern Federal District, Sergei Bulavin.
What information led the FSB to the leadership of the customs, who gave what evidence against Andrei Belyaninov, what new smuggling schemes were revealed during the searches - in the investigation of Novaya Gazeta.
sad holiday
July 14 Andrey Belyaninov celebrated his 59th birthday. The closest people were invited to a gala dinner at the restaurant "Bakinski Dvorik" on Rusakovskaya Street: relatives, colleagues, classmates. Throughout the evening, the guests raised their glasses to the health of the birthday boy, recalled his failed career as an actor (as a child, Belyaninov starred in the film Children of Don Quixote), and shared funny stories.
Andrei Belyaninov, according to his acquaintances, is an official atypical for modern Russia: very open, sarcastic. Many acquaintances call Belyaninov perhaps the most sincere person in the federal executive bodies.
"He was like that in his youth - a joker, a rake. Sometimes it seems that you have an adult child in front of you - naive, sometimes with some completely teenage undertakings. Once you were walking along the street, so he saw a group of some brawlers and offered to fight with them "You take on those, I take these!" - he says. They explain to him: "Andrey, calm down. You are healthy, and we are not. And if we win, what will the police officers feel when they check your documents in the department? “Thank God, they dissuaded me,” recalls an entrepreneur familiar with Belyaninov with a laugh.
Another acquaintance, a federal official, also notes Belyaninov’s light, sometimes frivolous, attitude to life: But Yuryich, on the contrary, is calm and uninhibited.
Another comrade Belyaninov tells how he avoids the bodyguards assigned to him in every possible way: “He likes to drive himself. There is an insert “without the right to search” on the windshield - and enough not to be disturbed. Of course, he loves himself, but the pleasure from He definitely doesn’t feel a servile attitude towards himself. ”
The State Duma deputy, who knows Belyaninov "at a distance", sees completely different qualities in him - excessive emotionality, sometimes turning into rudeness, complete disrespect for others, including colleagues in the power bloc.
“Somehow, employees of the Investigative Committee conducted searches in the offices of ordinary employees of the Federal Customs Service. The next day, Andrei Yuryevich came to Bastrykin - and literally from the doorway: “You, Alexander Ivanovich, where are you climbing? I have my own secret service! You have something to show, so show it, but don’t interfere with our work,” recalls the deputy. repeatedly clashed with employees of the Main Directorate for Combating Smuggling (GUBK) of the Federal Customs Service. "At the same time, when Voronin started having problems, Belyaninov said:" This is my friend. We quarrel, but I support him. It was unexpected," he added.
: "I wish you, Andrey Yuryevich, Siberian health, Caucasian longevity and St. Petersburg happiness," one of the guests raised a toast to the birthday boy to the general laughter.
St. Petersburg's happiness did not happen: two weeks later, in the offices of the head of the FCS, as well as two of his deputies - Ruslan Davydov (supervises the law enforcement unit in the service) and Andrei Strukov (deputy chairman of the FCS, supervises the SZTU) - the Department of Internal Security (SSB) of the FSB conducted searches within criminal case initiated by the Main Investigation Department (GSU) of the TFR this spring on the fact of smuggling of alcoholic products (Article 200.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Having seized the documents at the workplaces of the customs authorities, the FSB operatives went to two country estates of Andrei Belyaninov, located in the village of Konakovo, Tver Region, and the village of Bachurino in New Moscow.
In the latter, in addition to the luxurious interiors traditional for Russian senior civil servants, the operational-investigative group found a large amount of money: in total, at the exchange rate today - 66 million rubles. Later, Andrey Belyaninov, who himself, in a home tracksuit, took out shoeboxes full of cash from the mezzanine, will explain that this money is "family savings."
After carrying out the necessary investigative actions at the addresses of residence, Belyaninov, accompanied by employees of the FSB CSS, was taken for interrogation to the TFR, to Technical Lane, where he once came to swear with Bastrykin.
They released the head of the FCS, according to his acquaintances, after midnight - in the status of a witness.
Courvoisier case
A criminal case on the fact of smuggling of alcoholic products was initiated on March 29, 2016. The reason was the materials of the FSB CSS officers, who revealed in the Ust-Luga port of St. Petersburg illegal importation of a batch of elite cognac Courvoisier 1912 from the port of Hamburg under the guise of construction sealant. Subsequently, this brandy was supposed to replenish the bar card of the Buddha-Bar restaurant owned by the famous St. Petersburg businessman Mikhalchenko (now under arrest).
The damage incurred by the Russian budget from the submission of a fictitious customs declaration, which allowed the attackers to underestimate the amount of customs duties, as the investigation calculates, hardly exceeded 1.8 million rubles. But despite the insignificant amount of damage, in early April, FSB CSS operatives detained four people on suspicion of smuggling alcoholic beverages: Anatoly Kindzersky, deputy general director of Kontrail Logistic North-West LLC, Ilya Pichko, general director of Yugo-Vostochnaya Trading Company LLC, head security services of the holding company "Forum" Boris Korevsky and - from the second time - the owner of the latter, an influential St. Petersburg businessman Dmitry Mikhalchenko.
All four were placed in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center. According to an FSB officer familiar with the details of this criminal case, CSS operatives have been developing Mikhalchenko since 2015 (on September 25, the Moscow City Court authorized wiretapping of the businessman’s phones), but only in the case of Courvoisier cognac did they receive “irrefutable evidence of his participation in smuggling.”
“The damage may seem small, but the main thing is the documented fact of participation in these processes. Where there is cognac, there are also large lots of clothes and electronics. This remains to be verified. There were also covert audio recordings of the object - to understand his plans, "says the FSB officer.
The hunt for Dmitry Mikhalchenko was not accidental - this businessman, who controlled the lion's share of import flows through the North-Western Customs Administration, was considered a person from the inner circle of the former head of the FSO, Yevgeny Murov, who left his post at the end of May this year.
Murov, in turn, emphasize several unrelated sources in law enforcement agencies, maintained comradely relations with the already mentioned FSB general Voronin, former deputy chairman of the TFR Vasily Piskarev (in early May, his powers were terminated by presidential decree) and, finally, for the time being Acting head of the FCS Andrey Belyaninov.
: The smuggling of Courvoisier cognac, according to the FSB officer, was carried out as follows: in early spring, Dmitry Mikhalchenko allegedly instructed his subordinate Boris Korevsky to find a company that would deliver alcohol for the needs of his restaurant with minimal cash costs at the border.
Korevsky allegedly approached the co-owner of ULS-Global Igor Khavronov with this proposal, but he refused - their group imports expensive clothes, but not alcohol. (ULS-Global is a network of enterprises with a fleet of 350 trucks, an air fleet of 8 cargo aircraft of the Airbus A300-B4 and A310-300F brands and its own ferry Ferry 1.)
Last month, Novaya Gazeta wrote about this structure and its relationship with other participants in the transportation market (see No. 65 of June 20, 2016 - Smuggling Stars). Then, let me remind you, we cited excerpts from the letters we received from the road carrier Dmitry Zarubin, who is in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center on charges of evading customs payments (Article 194 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and creating an OPS (Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
Zarubin, in particular, noted that several groups of influence allegedly operated on the market of commodity smuggling in the NWTU zone - in addition to ULS-Global, these were allegedly Dmitry Mikhalchenko, an official of the St. Petersburg department of Rosreestr Boris Avakyan and OOO Kontrail Logistic North-West.
The representative of the latter, businessman Anatoly Kindzersky, as a result, according to operatives, took up the transportation of cognac for Dmitry Mikhalchenko.
An FSB officer familiar with the details of the criminal case notes: Kindzersky and Dmitry Mikhalchenko were allegedly two independent players in the “commodity smuggling” market, although both had the status of “untouchables” (as Dmitry Zarubin called them in his letters).
Kindzersky, like Mikhalchenko, had strong support from the leadership of the Federal Customs Service. "In September 2015, three operatives of the FCS GUBK - Dergachev, Muravyov and Starostin - began developing Kindzersky for several shipments at the Baltic customs. After this was reported to the management, the development was curtailed, and the operators were fired within one day," he gives an example FSB operative.
According to him, Kindzersky at that time had not only useful business connections, but also family ones - his own uncle allegedly worked as an adviser to the president of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, and even turned to him for help when his nephew was detained. But Sechin showed integrity: immediately after the initiation of a criminal case, his uncle from Rosneft was fired, the FSB official concludes.
Deal with investigators
In early summer, Anatoly Kindzersky concluded a pre-trial agreement with the investigation. He became the first and so far the only defendant in the case who agreed to cooperate (Dmitry Mikhalchenko does not give any evidence at all). According to our sources in the FSB, it was thanks to the testimony of Kindzersky that the operational-investigative group received grounds for the recent searches in the FCS.
"Kindzersky showed not only the circumstances of the import of cognac for Mikhalchenko, but also agreed to expose the people who patronized him," the FSB officer says. Which of the words of the deputy director of "Kontrail" could jeopardize the whole head of the special service?
In accordance with the testimony of Anatoly Kindzersky, cited by the FSB officer, Kontrail was able to enlist the support of the FCS leadership thanks to the founder of Translogistic LLC Sergey Bausov: “Bausov is a person from Andrey Belyaninov’s close circle. "he never served in the FCS. All to ensure that his contacts with the leadership of the FCS did not arouse suspicion. Bausov acted as a "liaison officer" between Kindzersky and the head of the FCS, for which he regularly received a salary."
Bausov, according to the interlocutor, during interrogation at the Main Investigative Committee of the ICR on Tuesday evening, spoke about how and for what purposes he introduced Kindzersky to Belyaninov.
Another "emissary" of the head of the FCS, with whom Anatoly Kindzersky, according to testimony, had to communicate, is businessman Sergei Lobanov.
Lobanov, according to the FSB officer, can be considered the closest person to Andrei Belyaninov: "In his testimony, Kindzersky admitted that Lobanov was allegedly introduced to him as a person responsible for delicate work - providing schemes for the import and export of goods and making mutual settlements."
Unlike Sergei Bausov, the investigators failed to catch Sergei Lobanov at home or at work - on Tuesday morning he was supposed to return to Moscow from Lithuania, but for some reason he was delayed.
Lobanov
Sergey Lobanov is only 33 years old, but he can be considered a fully established businessman: he runs a large insurance company, and also owns shares in commercial banks in Russia and Moldova.
Lobanov, in the opinion of an entrepreneur familiar with him, should owe his triumphant ascent to his father, a former employee of the KGB of the USSR, who served together with the future head of the Federal Customs Service in the same residency in the GDR.
At the end of 2011, Sergei Lobanov first appeared among the founders of the Arsenal insurance company, which two years later became the official insurer of cargo carriers from the Federal Customs Service.
According to the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption Dmitry Gorovtsov, one of the most consistent and harsh critics of Andrei Belyaninov, "with one order, an entire segment of the trucking market was intercepted." "I have repeatedly drawn the attention of law enforcement and control bodies to this egregious fact: the FSB, the TFR, the FAS: The last time, in April of this year, at a reception with the chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, I once again focused on the fact that people associated with the FCS enrich themselves unjustly. Where does this money go? To which banks? I hope the investigation will answer these questions," says Gorovtsov.
However, the interests of Sergei Lobanov are not limited to the insurance of cargo carriers, as Vladimir Markin, official representative of the TFR, noted, the young businessman "owns at least 15 companies." But the entrepreneur's most important assets are stakes in the Russian Nefteprombank and the Moldovan bank Victoria.
Structures associated with Lobanov acquired 40% of the shares in Victoria from the companies of the Moldovan banker Veaceslav Platon. Intermediary in the transaction, according to an entrepreneur familiar with Lobanov, was another Moldovan businessman - Ilan Shor, the largest owner of the Duty Free chain of stores in his country.
Both Platon and Shor are today under investigation in the pre-trial detention center in Chisinau - both are suspected of economic crimes.
"Sergey had only one deal with Platon, but Shor can be considered his full-fledged business partner in Moldova," says an acquaintance of Lobanova.
Shor and Lobanov, I must say, could become partners in Russia - last year they wanted to lease land adjacent to international automobile checkpoints to build 45 Duty Free stores on them. Andrei Belyaninov came up with the idea of allocating these plots and transferring them to commercial companies, but this initiative did not find support in the government.
Ilan Shor seems to be familiar with Belyaninov himself, says an acquaintance of the latter. According to him, they were allegedly introduced by Kozhin (the former head of the President's Administrative Department - A.S.). Shor ensured the centralization of the supply of Moldovan fruits and vegetables through the Lobanov channels.
"Shor is the key to Lobanov's money in Moldova," the FSB officer adds, but suggests not rushing to find it: "Now it's important to understand what mechanisms allow unscrupulous carriers to cheat the Russian budget."
According to him, in addition to the well-known schemes for illegally declaring goods (when goods with a high customs duty are transported under the guise of goods with a low customs duty), the so-called "express delivery", introduced by Andrey Belyaninov's order in November 2014, has recently become a very popular destination.
Its essence is this:
individual companies were endowed by the FCS with exclusive rights to duty-free import of consumer goods ordered by Russian citizens in foreign online stores. Customs declarations in the case of such imports are not filled out, and the only document submitted to the customs authority is the register of goods customers.
According to sources from the FSB, after the introduction of this innovation, part of the smuggling flows moved just to "express delivery": "Let's say there is a company that has received the right to duty-free import of goods from the Federal Customs Service. You enter into an agreement with a conditional Italian forwarder who has an agreement ( or maybe not) with some Italian online store. Bayer (buyer. - A.S.) of the boutique buys a commercial batch of clothes weighing 5 thousand kg for the Russian store, however, the formal recipient of these clothes in Sheremetyevo is the company that received the authority from the FCS. Here you don’t even have to take risks by making false declarations - just a register of customers is transferred to the customs authority (this is a table in which random full names can be indicated, without passport data, without signatures, at the rate of 20-30 kg of clothing per person ) and so the goods are cleared".
According to the interlocutor, the cost of "express delivery" services for a consignment of goods weighing 5,000 kg is 90,000 euros. "And this money can only be received by those whom the FCS management has given the right to such transportation," he says.
This topic can also be raised as part of the ongoing case of smuggling of alcoholic beverages, says the FSB officer, since CSS operatives seized an "unofficial report" from one of these carriers, Tamarix Logistics LLC, at the office of the insurance company "Arsenal" of Sergey Lobanov (June 2 2015, Belyaninov included this company among other organizations entitled to engage in "express delivery")
Resignation
Immediately after the searches in the FCS, there were reports in the media about the impending resignation of the head of the department, Andrei Belyaninov. Soon the head of the legal department of the FCS, Larisa Cherkesova, denied this information. According to our information, the high-ranking customs officer himself was not going to resign - he was not embarrassed by any suspicions (even if they did not result in the relevant investigative decisions) about the participation of the FCS leadership in smuggling, nor by the defiant photographs of millions of "family savings" hidden in boxes from under shoes. However, on the morning of July 28, Dmitry Medvedev ordered Belyaninov to resign, appointing Sergei Bulavin, presidential envoy to the Northwestern Federal District, to the post of head of the Federal Customs Service.
According to a federal official we know, once at an interdepartmental meeting attended by generals from Directorate K of the FSB, the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General's Office,
Andrei Belyaninov, responding to a colleague's sarcastic remark about the recipe for "longevity" (he has headed the Federal Customs Service for more than 10 years), allegedly shrugged his hands: "I'm like that traffic cop who doesn't raise his baton - I don't bother anyone to break it. If it interfered, I would work so long?"
It seems that the customs general did not pay attention to the fact that many of those whom he "did not interfere with" themselves lost their posts or went to pre-trial detention centers.
". The company is located in Mytishchi. The company is engaged in renting out its own real estate. Three years later, 100% of the company passed into the possession of Lyudmila's daughter Svetlana. The company exists to this day and shows good financial results. So, as of 2014, the net profit of Belye Dew amounted to about 36 million rubles. Such data is provided by RBC with reference to Vedomosti.
A little earlier, Belyaninova owned a 40% stake in the Garantstroynedvizhimost company. The company has become a customer of the Ruzskiye Dachi cottage settlement, 100 km from the Moscow Ring Road. The village was managed by the Brazhnikovo company, among the founders of which was the Lama investment company of Sergei Lobanov, a former assistant of Belyaninov.
Another area of interest for Lyudmila Belyaninova is the medical business. She is a co-owner of the Andreevsky Hospitals holding. In addition, Andrei Belyaninov's wife owns 60% of the Nebolit medical center. Like Belye Dew, the company makes consistently good profits. In 2014, the net profit of the medical center amounted to 63.1 million rubles with a total revenue of 429 million rubles.
Andrey Belyaninov's daughter, Svetlana, is also in the real estate business. As the publication managed to find out, Svetlana is the owner of 100% of the company B100 LLC, which specializes in preparing for the sale of its own real estate. In addition, since 2011, she owns the Moscow LLC Nizhnevolzhsk-invest. The company is the owner of a two-story building with an area of 1609 sq. m at Varshavskoye shosse, 89, and leases until mid-2030 a land plot of 3679 sq. m below it. It is noteworthy that one of the clinics "Andreevsky Hospitals - Nebolit" is located in the same house.
Note that the relatives of the head of the FCS of the second level are not engaged in business. Close people of Andrei Belyaninov work in large state-owned companies. Ilya Shumanov, director of the Center for Anti-Corruption Research and Initiatives of Transparency International Russia, announced this the day before.
By the way, Andrei Belyaninov himself is not engaged in business. This is evidenced by the data of SPARK-Interfax.
Interest in the business of Andrey Belyaninov's family is not caused by chance. Earlier, FSB officers found about 10 million rubles, 400 thousand dollars and 300 thousand euros in his apartment. In addition, expensive works of art were kept in Belyaninov's apartment. The head of the FCS himself explained the origin of wealth with "family savings."
Andrey Belyaninov, latest news
Searches. Conducted at the workplace and in the house of Belyaninov were recognized as legal. So far, the head of the FCS is in the status of a witness in a major case of alcohol smuggling.
According to the official representative of the TFR Vladimir Markin, the case is being investigated under Part 3 of Article 200.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on the fact of illegal movement of alcohol products on a large scale across the customs border of the Customs Union and non-payment of mandatory customs payments.
Meanwhile, Andrei Belyaninov's resignation is out of the question. According to TASS, the country's chief customs officer is currently on a planned vacation. The Kremlin urges to ask questions about the possible resignation of Belyaninov directly to the investigating authorities. Dmitry Peskov, President Putin's press secretary, speaking to reporters, said:
“At present, he [Belyaninov] is not accused of anything. He has the status of a witness, so the departments that carry out investigative actions should comment,” he said.
Help DK.RU
At the beginning of his career, Andrei Belyaninov served in foreign intelligence, then worked at the USSR Embassy in the GDR. In the 1990s, he moved into the financial sector: he was deputy chairman of the board of CB REA-Bank and chairman of the board of Novikombank. In 2000, he headed the newly formed Federal State Unitary Enterprise Rosoboronexport.
The activities of Rosoboronexport under Andrei Belyaninov were characterized by a steady increase in arms export revenues: from $3.2 billion in 2001 to $5.1 billion in 2003. The share of "Rosoboronexport" in the total volume of Russian arms supplies in 2003 reached a record high - 94%. The portfolio of orders at the beginning of 2004 was $14–14.5 billion.
In 2004, Belyaninov's place in the structure was taken by Sergey Chemezov. Belyaninov himself becomes head of the Federal Defense Order Service. Under him, the volume of state defense orders grew one and a half times, from 148 billion rubles. in 2004 to 236.7 billion rubles. in 2006
He was appointed head of the Federal Customs Service on May 12, 2006. This happened a day after the presidential decree on the transfer of customs from the Ministry of Economic Development to the government.
Since the appointment of Andrei Belyaninov as head of the FCS, the volume of customs and other payments to the federal budget has been steadily increasing. If in 2006 it was 2.8 trillion rubles, then in 2014 it reached 7.1 trillion rubles. The results of 2015, however, turned out to be worse: the customs sent a little more than 5 trillion rubles to the budget, which is explained by the imposition of sanctions and a general decline in business activity.
From time to time, the FCS has been at the center of scandals. The loudest of them is associated with the adviser to the head of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Rostek" Alexander Romanov. In 2012, he was charged with organizing an illegal collection of money from importing companies for expedited clearance of goods. He was sentenced to five years of strict regime and a fine of 117 million rubles, but later the regional court changed the verdict of the district court, and Romanov's term was reduced to two years, and the fine was reduced to 23 million rubles. At that time, FSUE Rostek was headed by Alexander Povstyany, a former colleague of Belyaninov at Novikombank and his adviser at the Federal Customs Service.