Merlion co-owner Oleg Karchev
After releasing the accused, the investigators dealt with each other.
Yesterday it became known about a new turn in the scandalous criminal case of the co-owners of the country's largest IT company Merlion. Employees of the TFR and the FSB began an investigation against their colleagues, who released the defendants from the pre-trial detention center, then terminating the criminal prosecution of some of them. According to one of the versions, the reason for the investigative actions was the appeal to the head of the TFR Alexander Bastrykin, a former participant in the investigation, who is now abroad.
Searches and seizures of documents were carried out by officers of the Main Investigation Directorate (GSO) of the TFR, with the support of FSB operatives, at the investigators of the Moscow Main Directorate of the Committee, in whose proceedings until recently there was a criminal case on attempted murder and deliberate destruction or damage to property (Art.30, Art.105 and Art.167 of the Criminal Code). Then, after several appeals from the victim, the former general director of Merlion Vyacheslav Symonenko, who complained about the bias of the investigation, the case was transferred to the central office of the TFR – the State Investigative Committee. The TFR and its subdivisions refrained from official comments. Unofficially, sources said that the searches took place without detention. Mr. Symonenko himself believes that the turn in the investigation occurred not only because of his appeals, but also the report sent to the chairman of the TFR Alexander Bastrykin by the first investigator in the Merlion case – Major of Justice Alexei Nesnov, who served in the department of the committee for the North-Western Administrative District Moscow.
It was he who, having considered the report of the FSB officers, the statement of the victim and the confession of one of the defendants, initiated a criminal case in 2020. According to it, the co-owners of Merlion Oleg Karchev, Alexey Abramov, Vladislav Mangutov and the head of the company's security service Boris Levin were detained and then arrested. According to the initial version of the investigation, after the conflict between the shareholders of Merlion and Mr. Simonenko (the entrepreneur claims that he was not paid $ 4.5 million to leave the company), Mr. Levin allegedly hired two performers who threw Molotov cocktails at the house of a top manager in Krasnogorsk near Moscow. There were, however, no casualties and injuries, as the fire was quickly extinguished.
After the case was taken away from him, the investigator Nesnov complained to the head of the department about the threats, explaining the subsequent release from the pre-trial detention center of the defendants with bribes allegedly received by the new participants in the investigation. Note that now the criminal prosecution of Messrs. Abramov and Mangutov has been terminated, and Oleg Karchev and Boris Levin are awaiting appropriate decisions, being banned from certain actions and under house arrest. The investigator himself left not only the committee, but also the country, having moved, according to some sources, to the UAE.
The defendants' lawyers declined to comment on Mr. Nesnov's report. Previously, they have repeatedly stated that they were slandered by Vyacheslav Symonenko, as well as the arsonist allegedly bribed by him. The arson itself, according to the defense, was a staging: thanks to the criminal prosecution of the integrator's co-owners, the victim expected to receive substantial payments from them.
Alexey Sokovnin
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