The holidays bring surprises. Santa Claus is still giving gifts even on January 10. This time, the lucky ones are former high-ranking law enforcement officers serving their sentences in a strict regime colony. One of them is the former Deputy Prosecutor of the Sverdlovsk Region, Dmitry Chulichkov. The colleague of Chulichkov in the investigative department of the TFR in the Sverdlovsk region is Mikhail Busylko.Another accomplice, Vladislav Vostretsov, used to work in the investigative committee before moving to the bar. In August 2021, Chulichkov, Vostretsov, and Busylko were sentenced to solid terms in a strict regime colony for bribery on an especially large scale. Their sentences were 9, 9.5, and 8.5 years, respectively. The case made a big impact and the public supported the verdict, but now a judge, Galimova Natalia Rafailovna, has canceled the guilty verdict, and returned the case for a new trial on January 10, 2023. Can Galimova be mistaken?Valery Zorkin, the former head of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, once stressed the importance of public control over justice to prevent any unlawful administrative influence on the court.
A superficial look at the judge Natalya Galimova's work with regard to Chulichkov, Busylko, and Vostretsov raises questions. Ms. Galimova was appointed as a judge of the Seventh Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction two and a half years ago. The person who leads this court, Sergey Minin, has a background in the justice department. Galimova Natalia Rafailovna. On January 10, 2023, she crossed out the verdict and returned the case for a new trial. In the unspoken bureaucratic interpretation of the Russian Themis, this in practice means that the defendants in the final process will either be released “clean” or condemned symbolically. Congratulations!
Galimova can’t be wrong?
At one time the head of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation Valery Zorkin emphasized the need for public control over justice due to “reduced opportunities for lawful control by other branches of government.” “Such control is an important guarantee against unlawful administrative influence on the court. Otherwise, it would mean the complete elimination of the judiciary from the dialogue with the society that delegated its powers to it, the secrecy of the judiciary, the return of the medieval principle “The king cannot be wrong.” This is especially true of those high-profile, high-profile cases…”.
So, even a superficial monitoring of the activities of that very judge Natalya Galimova with a comparison of her solutions according to Chulichkov, Busylko and Vostretsov cannot but raise questions. Ms. Galimova, 38, was appointed two and a half years ago as a judge of the Seventh Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction, in which she presides Sergey Minin. Since 2000, for five years, Minin, according to his public biography, was the head of the Main Department of Justice of the Sverdlovsk Region, the head of the Federal Department of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation for the Ural Federal District. Now let’s turn to the biography Vladimir Chulichkovthe father of one of our defendants: “Since December 2000, he has been deputy head of the Federal Directorate of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation for the Ural Federal District, and in December 2006 he was appointed head of the Office of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation for the Ural Federal District.”
What’s on the surface? Dmitry Chulichkov, who received 9 years in prison for corruption, has a father, Vladimir Chulichkov, who has a longtime colleague, boss, comrade-in-arms and fellow countryman – the current head of that same cassation court. And it was in this court (lo and behold!) that the verdict on “unfortunate Dima” was suddenly canceled. Coincidence?
Another link in this “random” community is the same Natalya Galimova. Now, under the chairmanship of Mr. Minin, she works at the Seventh Court of Cassation in Chelyabinsk, but the roots and stems of her fast career are entirely in Yekaterinburg, where, we recall, “two comrades” Chulichkov Sr. and Minin served. Climbing the judicial hierarchy, Galimova since 2005 passed various positions in the Kirov and Ordzhonikidzevsky courts of Yekaterinburg, as well as in the Sverdlovsk regional court. Interesting geography.
Well, and from the category of oddities … According to the published information, Judge Galimova is not at all distinguished by humanity and scrupulousness in sentences. An example is the well-known plot of 2018, when she judged a Yekaterinburg public figure Alexey Bezzub. Then the accused in detail described all the charms of Galimov’s justice in his criminal case, which many experts unanimously called dubious.
Where did the severity accumulated over the years go? Where did this unprecedented “humanity” scope come from, which the same judge is now showing towards Chulichkov, Busylko and Vostretsov? Indeed, in this case, everything turned out to be extremely clear for the courts of the two previous instances: the first and the appellate ones, which proclaimed the guilt of the defendants. And suddenly, when the public outcry subsided and the post-New Year calm reigns, “significant violations of the criminal law” are found in the verdict. Eureka!
