The former deputy minister of transportation of the Russian Federation failed miserably.
A court in Moscow has passed a sentence on former Russian Deputy Minister of Transportation Vladimir Tokarev. He was charged with fraud in the complex reconstruction of a number of railroad sections when he was the first deputy director of Spetstransstroy, which was a contractor for Russian Railways. However, he was sentenced to eight years for embezzlement. The former official did not admit guilt, and his defense is appealing the court decision.
Basmanny court of the capital passed a sentence on former Deputy Minister of Transport of Russia Vladimir Tokarev and the head of the contractor company of JSC RZD Alexander Ivanov. They were charged with especially large-scale embezzlement or misappropriation (part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
Vladimir Tokarev, who at that time held the position of Deputy Minister of Transport, was detained in January 2022 by investigators of the Transport Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Central Federal District (CFD) as part of a criminal case of especially large-scale fraud (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). He soon resigned. As Kommersant reported, the ex-officer was then charged with fraud for 523 million rubles during the complex reconstruction of the railroad on the Maxim Gorky-Kotelnikovo-Tikhoretskaya-Krymskaya section, the customer of which was JSC RZDstroy (a subsidiary of Russian Railways), and one of the contractors was LLC Spetstransstroy (STS), where Vladimir Tokarev was deputy general director from 2016 to 2018.
After the completion of certain stages of construction, it became necessary to rehabilitate highways, including in the Timashevsky and Korenovsky districts of the Krasnodar Territory. According to the investigation, the management of Spetstransstroy, while carrying out work on these sites, devised a scheme to illegally withdraw the customer’s funds, including by making additions to the documentation.
As expert examinations were carried out, the amount of allegedly stolen funds was reduced to approximately 400 million roubles, and this was one of the objects for the construction of which STS received 1.4 billion rubles from the structures of Russian Railways.
The subcontractor performing the work was Glavstroyinvest Group of Companies LLC, which was transferred about 723 million rubles, of which the GC later returned 100 million rubles of the advance payment. The rest of the money froze due to non-acceptance of the work and a dispute between the parties over its cost. The project was already completed by another company; in 2018 the bankruptcy proceedings started in GC, and its head Alexander Ivanov became the second defendant in Vladimir Tokarev’s case.
It should be noted that the investigation was completed by the investigation department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, whose employees reclassified the actions of the defendants from fraud to embezzlement or misappropriation, and the damage increased to the entire amount of the contract with Glavstroyinvest – 723 million rubles.
During the arguments, the state prosecution requested nine years for the defendants. Judge Yevgenia Nikolaeva found the defendants guilty and sentenced them to eight years.
They will also have to pay 423 million rubles to the injured party as compensation for the damage caused.
The defense of the defendants stated that they expected an acquittal, as in their opinion there was no crime in the case. The lawyers of Vladimir Tokarev and Alexander Ivanov intend to appeal the decision of the Basmanny Court.