Karelia Yabloko members charged in “Petropit case” recognised as illegally prosecuted for political reasons

Member of the Petrozavodsk city council from the Yabloko party Olga Zaletskaya and managing director of the Lentorg trading house Alexandra Kornilova were arrested on March 25, 2015. They were charged under part 4, article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Embezzlement, committed by a group of persons by preliminary agreement in particularly large measure”) in a case about the sale of the building of the Petrozavodsk school food plant (the Petropit case) in 2013. On March 26 Zaletskaya and Kornilova were taken into custody by a decision of the Petrozavodsk city court, and 10 days later they were placed under house arrest by the Supreme Court of the Republic of Karelia. On July 27 both women were released on bail of 1 million and 2 million roubles respectively. Besides Zaletskaya and Kornilova, member of the legislative assembly of the Republic of Karelia Anastasia Kravchuk and her husband and member of the bureau of the regional council of the regional branch of the Yabloko party Vasily Popov have been charged in the case on the sale of the Petropit building. Popov was ordered arrested in absentia on May 22, 2015 by the Petrozavodsk city court, and at present is forced to remain on the territory of Finland.

According to the investigation, in the period from July 1, 2011 to January 1, 2014 all four of the accused conspired, by means of deceit and abuse of trust of officials of the Petrozavodsk mayor’s office, to acquire the right to a non-residential building in which the municipal establishment Petropit was located. As a result of these actions, according to investigators, Petrozavodsk’s treasury incurred damages of 16.5 million roubles – the amount by which the cost of the sold building was reduced.

The chronology and circumstances of the criminal prosecution of Zaletskaya, Kornilova, Kravchuk and Popov allow us to draw a conclusion about its political motivation and connections with the political position of the accused and political events in general which have been taking place in the Republic of Karelia since 2013. Despite the fact that the sale of the Petropit building was completed in January 2013, the criminal case was launched one year and three months later. The opening of the criminal case happened after candidate Galina Shirshina, independent of the leadership of the Republic of Karelia, with the support of Vasily Popov and the local branch of the Yabloko party, won the election for mayor of Petrozavodsk against the incumbent, member of United Russia Nikolai Levin. The date of the opening of the criminal case and the searches at the homes of Zaletskaya, Kornilova, Kravchuk and Popov coincided with the report by mayor Shirshina on her work for 2013. The detention and arrest of Olga Zaletskaya and Alexandra Kornilova a year later again deliberately coincided with the annual report by the mayor to the city council. So this criminal case has every reason to be considered specifically an instrument of pressure and fear against Petrozavodsk council members with the aim of bringing a vote of no-confidence against Shirshina.

Besides the Petropit case, the law-enforcement bodies have launched criminal cases against other members of the Petrozavodsk city council and the legislative assembly of the Republic of Karelia who support the mayor of the capital of the republic, Shirshina. On January 29, 2015, the speaker of the Petrozavodsk city council, Oleg Fokin, was detained. As in the case of Zaletskaya and Kornilova, a criminal case against Fokin was opened after his refusal to vote for an unsatisfactory assessment of the work of Shirshina. In February 2015 member of the legislative assembly of the republic Devlet Alikhanov was detained and arrested, after speaking critically about Karelia governor Alexander Khudilaynen. In early 2014 a criminal case was opened against Galina Shirshina’s deputy Yevgenia Sukhorukova, and the charges against Sukhorukova were brought six months later for actions at her previous job – in the administration of the Prionezhsky district of Karelia in September 2012. In November 2014 a criminal case under article 141 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Impeding public electoral rights or the work of electoral commissions”) was opened against another member of the Yabloko party, the deputy chair of the regional branch of the party and head of the Petrozavodsk city Council of Veterans, Galina Karasova. The chronology, circumstances and fact itself of the opening of this number of cases against council members and public activists who support Petrozavodsk mayor Shirshina are proof of a full-scale campaign of persecution directed against a mayor who is independent of the regional authorities and her supporters.

The lawyer for Zaletskaya and Kornilova justifiably points to a number of facts that refute the investigation’s theory of the alleged crime. The deal to transfer the building of the former school food plant to rental by the company Yadviga, founded by Kornilova, was concluded in June 2011. At that point the Petropit company, which owned the building, was going through bankruptcy proceedings. The company’s management was being implemented by a receiver, Alexander Osin, who was appointed by a court ruling and who personally signed the agreement to give the building to Yadvig for rental. In June 2015 the Court of Arbitration of the Republic of Karelia recognised this decision by Osin as legal. Olga Zaletskaya was appointed director of Petropit only in January 2012, six months after the signing of the rental agreement. The instruction to put the Petropit building up for sale was signed not by Zaletskaya, but by Petrozavodsk mayor Nikolai Levin, after receiving the results of a valuation from the state valuation company. The sale of the building itself took place by a decision of the Petrozavodsk city court, which on April 13, 2013 ordered Petropit to conclude a buy-sell agreement for the plant building with Anastasia Kravchuk, who won the bid.

The combination of these facts, including the two court rulings which recognised the transfer of the Petropit building for long-term rental and its subsequent sale as legal, allow us to place in doubt the qualification of the actions of Zaletskaya, Kornilova, Kravchuk and Popov as embezzlement committed by a group of persons by preliminary agreement in particularly large measure. Olga Zaletskaya had no authority to put the Petropit building up for sale. At the time when the agreement for long-term rental was concluded with Yadviga, Zaletskaya was not the director of the company and could not exert influence on the concluding of the agreement, or on the company’s emergence from bankruptcy proceedings (it became possible to put the plant building up for sale only after Petropit came to a peaceful agreement with its creditors). The management of Petropit was forced to sign the decision to conclude a buy-sell agreement for the building with Anastasia Kravchuk by a court ruling.

It is worth mentioning separately that article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Embezzlement”) in recent years has been an instrument of politically-motivated criminal prosecutions (for example the YUKOS case, the Kirovles case against Alexei Navalny and Pyotr Ofitserov, the case of the donations for Alexei Navalny’s election campaign in 2013, the Yves Rocher case against Alexei and Oleg Navalny, and so on) with the aid of the artificial criminalisation of ordinary financial and economic activity. The Petropit case is another example in the array of politically-motivated cases under article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code, “Embezzlement”.

Thus, in accordance with the criteria of the Memorial Human Rights Centre, Olga Zaletskaya, Alexandra Kornilova, Anastasia Kravchuk and Vasily Popov can be recognised as illegally prosecuted for political reasons due to the following circumstances. The criminal prosecution and arrest of Zaletskaya and Kornilova were applied exclusively in connection with their public and political activity and public political position. There is no evidence of any crime committed in the actions of any of the four accused. As a result of their criminal prosecution and arrest the right of Zaletskaya and Kornilova to a fair legal investigation, guaranteed by the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, was violated.

Recognising a person as illegally prosecuted for political reasons does not mean that the Memorial Human Rights Centre agrees with the views and statements of the political prisoners, or that it approves of their statements or actions.

More details about the criminal case against Olga Zaletskaya, Alexandra Kornilova, Anastasia Kravchuk and Vasily Popov can be read here.