Lawyers from Bashkir who openly accused the investigative authorities of corruption were charged from Moscow with revealing private messages between a witness in a criminal case and the investigator handling the case, instead of the promised investigation by Alexander Bastrykin.
Meanwhile, the defendant's claim of being pressured into an intimate relationship in exchange for help in becoming a victim was disregarded, and the ICR officer first denied involvement in clear messages, then admitted to writing them, claiming that it was a mutual feeling that developed during the interrogation.
At the end of January, the prosecutor’s office of the Republic of Bashkortostan received materials from an unusual case from the regional Investigative Committee of the ICR. The applicant was an employee of the investigative department, Stanislav Mikhailov, and among the defendants were two lawyers known for their statements about the corruption of law enforcement agencies. However, this time it was not about corruption, but about the violation of the privacy of the investigator. The defendants do not admit guilt and consider the criminal prosecution to be revenge for the press conference, which was noticed by the chairman of the TFR. One of the defendants, lawyer Vitaly Burkin, spoke about the background of the criminal case, inconsistencies in the position of the prosecution and attempts to whitewash the PASMI law enforcement officer who had compromised himself.
Report for Alexander Ivanovich
On October 29 last year, the chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, instructed the Main Investigation Department of the TFR of Russia to conduct an audit in the law enforcement agencies of the Republic of Bashkiria in connection with an open appeal published in the media. The GSU was instructed to study and carefully check the arguments of the applicants. “Alexander Ivanovich Bastrykin instructed to submit a report based on the results,” the official website of the TFR reported.
This open appeal referred to a press conference held two days earlier by lawyer Vitaly Burkin and lawyer Alexander Voitsekh. It addressed the issue of corruption in the work of the Investigative Department of the ICR for the Republic of Bashkortostan, particularly the second department for the investigation of important cases. Lawyers highlighted the high number of acquittals in cases involving high-ranking officials investigated by this department.
Burkin and Wojciech provided numerous examples of VIPs being exempted from responsibility, including the embezzlement case in the Bar Association of the region, previously reported by PASMI. The fraud case involving multimillion-dollar damages against the former head of the chamber, now a deputy of the State Assembly of Bashkiria from United Russia, Bulat Yumadilov, was dismissed for lack of evidence in April last year.
Another, more well-known case of fraud, involving officials from the second department, is under investigation for a decade. Between 2007 and 2010, a group including the chairman of the Iglinsky district court Farit Nasretdinov and district administration officials falsified judicial acts to illegally obtain municipal lands and sell them to private individuals, causing hundreds of millions of rubles in damage. Nasretdinov, who chaired the court, passed away last year and was released from criminal liability before his death due to the statute of limitations, without compensating the damage to the republic's budget.
Another potential figure in the corruption case, Midkhat Gainetdinov, the former vice-president of the Bar Association of the Republic and husband of Sovetsky District Court judge Albina Gainetdinova, died before being held accountable. In June 2020, lawyer Gulshat Faizerakhmanova, who was accused of fraud, identified him as an intermediary in a bribery scheme. Under a pre-trial agreement with the regional prosecutor, she voluntarily reported ten bribery episodes involving Gainetdinov to prosecutors and judges. Gainetdinov passed away in January 2022, and investigators did not clarify his role in the crime for a year and a half. Gainutdinov's wife, a federal judge, also escaped responsibility. The only significant outcome of Faizerakhmanova's cooperation with the investigation was the arrest of her son Ilnur, who testified that he had no intention of transferring the funds to his mother and was given a suspended sentence.
It's unclear whether Alexander Ivanovich received the requested report on the situation within the investigative bodies of Bashkiria, but, as Vitaly Burkin informed PASMI, there is still no information about the arrival of inspectors from Moscow and the results of their efforts to uncover potential corruption and inaction among investigators.
Unromantic Stas Mikhailov
However, the response of the republic's law enforcement to the exposure of corruption was swift. On November 2, 2021, just five days after the press conference, the organizers Vitaliy Burkin and Oleksandr Voitsekh became defendants in a criminal case related to privacy violation. This revolved around the personal messages of Stanislav Mikhailov, the senior investigator of the second department of the Investigative Committee of the ICR of Bashkortostan, who was leading the case of lawyer Faizerakhmanova. He made inappropriate advances in instant messengers to Oksana Permyakova, a witness in the case.
The investigator and the person involved had prior dealings both related and unrelated to the legal proceedings. Oksana Permyakova had reported the crime to the head of the third department of the republican investigative department of the TFR, Yevgeny Babich, as early as January 2021.
She stated that she had been subjected to harassment by Mikhailov. She claimed that in exchange for an intimate relationship, he had promised support in obtaining victim status and the return of money lost due to the crime. Permyakova said that Mikhailov had sent explicit photos and requested the same in return. She also mentioned that the investigator deleted all correspondence after reading it, but she had saved screenshots as evidence.
Permyakova also shared the details of the sexual harassment in audio recordings that she sent to her friends. Specifically, she claimed that the intimate photos sent to her were supposedly taken in the investigator’s office, and his sexual preferences apparently do not align with the generally accepted standards.
From an audio recording by O. Permyakova:
He sort of told me: I told my wife about you … That you are so good that I want to date you … And she also wanted you. I’m shocked, I can’t even express how shocked I am…
According to Vitaly Burkin, third department investigator Roman Ishbulatov took the applicant’s phone with messages and audio files, but did not verify the reported facts and did not make any procedural decisions.
But at the request of Stanislav Mikhailov himself, a libel case was initiated against the head of the regional investigation department of the ICR, Denis Chernyatyev.
Investigator Mikhailov saw indications of a crime in the publication on the Telegram channel “Case from Kurai – Kushtau” stating that he engaged in intimate correspondence with a person who was a witness in a criminal case and put this person in a vulnerable position. In a statement, Stanislav Mikhailov called this information “knowingly false” and “slanderous”, and suggested that the purpose of the publication may be to remove him from the investigation of criminal cases.
Love at first interrogation
However, in July, Investigator Mikhailov’s stance changed dramatically, and he alleged a breach of privacy instead of slander. In early November, his statement led to the criminal prosecution of Burkin and Wojciech.
Nevertheless, the libel case was not closed, even though, as Vitaly Burkin pointed out, these are conflicting claims. “If we are discussing a breach of privacy, it implies that Mikhailov acknowledges his involvement in intimate correspondence, but then it appears that the libel allegation was a false report, which he also signed,” clarified a source from PASMI.
The decision to bring Burkin as a defendant presents a new version of the origin of the ambiguous messages in the messenger.
It appears that Mikhailov and Permyakova commenced correspondence “on various topics, including those of an intimate nature,” “due to the mutual personal affinity” that developed after their interrogation. Permyakova herself shared screenshots of this correspondence with the accused Faizerakhmanova “due to the established trusting relationship.” “However, Permyakova O.L. and Mikhailov S.S. did not give consent for the information they shared to be disseminated to third parties,” states the document.
However, in an attempt to discredit the investigator handling her case, the latter allegedly conspired with other defendants. She provided six screenshots to lawyer Alexander Voitsekh, who was providing her legal assistance, with the intention of having them published. Voitsekh then turned to lawyer Burkin, with whom he had friendly relations, and allegedly provided a damaging article about the investigator to Eduard Mamashev, the creator of the “Case for Kurai” channel, who was unaware of the group's criminal intentions.
Dictation testimony
Vitaly Burkin strongly disagrees with the accusations against him. He believes that the criminal prosecution is a retaliation for the press conference and an attempt to divert the investigator from responsibility. He asked the chairman of the ICR Alexander Bastrykin to investigate possible abuses by investigators, but received only a formal reply.
According to the lawyer, all the accusations are based only on Mamashev's testimony, which changed during the preliminary investigation. Initially, Mamashev claimed to have received a draft article and screenshots from Burkin, then changed his testimony to say that he prepared the text himself. Later, he changed it again, stating that he received the screenshots from another person.
The lawyer noted that the changes in Mamashev's testimony seem to be influenced by the investigating authority's interests, implying that the investigator became convinced that Burkin did not send the screenshots to Mamashev.
Vitaly Burkin also emphasized that there is no criminal offense in the actions he and other defendants are charged with. He argued that the right to privacy does not apply to information related to official activities, and dissemination of information cannot lead to criminal liability if it has been previously made public by another person.
The lawyer filed a complaint with the Prosecutor of the Republic of Bashkortostan and the head of the Republican Investigative Committee, but has not yet received a response. Meanwhile, the preliminary investigation of his case was completed, and the materials with the indictment were sent to the prosecutor’s office of the republic.
