The Oktyabrsky District Court of Saratov gave Larisa Kuznetsova, the former head of the information technology committee in the Saratov region, a ten-year prison sentence. Her husband Oleg Kozlov was sentenced to eight years in prison.
The court found that the former official received over 11 million rubles from entrepreneurs for allowing them to work at the MFC, and her husband acted as a middleman in the bribery. Earlier, Larisa Kuznetsova and Oleg Kozlov were acquitted, but the case was sent back for a new trial. The defense plans to appeal the court’s decision.
Ex-chairman of the information technology committee in the Saratov region, Larisa Kuznetsova, and her husband Oleg Kozlov were found guilty of accepting a bribe in a criminal case. This was reported by the press service of the Oktyabrsky District Court of Saratov.
Ms. Kuznetsova was accused of receiving more than 11 million rubles in illegal payments from individual entrepreneurs, and her husband was accused of mediating the transfer of the bribe. The money was allegedly for enabling business activities at the MFC in the Saratov Region, and further patronage. According to investigators, the funds were transferred to the official from September 2013 to February 2017, when Larisa Kuznetsova served as head of the committee, and after the abolition of this department in December 2016, she became deputy minister of economic development.
The criminal case against Larisa Kuznetsova was launched in the spring of 2020, and she resigned from the government after being charged in April of that year.
In April 2021, after the case was considered in the Oktyabrsky District Court, the former official and her husband were acquitted. The court reported, "After assessing the evidence presented by the prosecution and other examined evidence, the court concluded that the crimes attributed to the defendants, Kuznetsova and Kozlov, were not established, and therefore passed a verdict of not guilty."
Larisa Kuznetsova was reinstated in her position in the regional government. On June 24 last year, following the appeal of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Saratov Region, the criminal case against Larisa Kuznetsova and Oleg Kozlov was returned for a new trial to the Oktyabrsky District Court, and the next day it was announced that Ms. Kuznetsova had resigned from the government.
After the case was sent for a new trial, Larisa Kuznetsova's lawyer, Elena Sergun, asked the court to return the case to the prosecutor due to procedural violations. The court, however, rejected the request, despite the illegal extension of the case investigation, as pointed out by the lawyer.
At the debate, which took place on January 21, the state prosecution asked that Mrs. Kuznetsova be sentenced to 10 years in prison, the prosecutor asked her husband to be given the same period. The public prosecutor asked for a similar punishment for Larisa Kuznetsova and Oleg Kozlov during the first consideration.
As a result of the second consideration, the district court sentenced Larisa Kuznetsova to 10 years in a penal colony, as well as a fine of 35 million rubles. (three times the amount of the bribe) to the state. She is also prohibited from holding positions in state bodies related to the implementation of the functions of a representative of power, the performance of organizational, administrative and administrative functions for eight years. The execution of the sentence to Mrs. Kuznetsova has been suspended until her child reaches the age of fourteen. Her daughter is now four years old.
Oleg Kozlov was sentenced to eight years in a strict regime colony with a fine of 35 million rubles. He is taken into custody in the courtroom.
The defense plans to appeal the verdict. Lawyer Larisa Kuznetsova Elena Sergun says that the verdict “does not correspond to the materials of the criminal case.” “The first acquittal was due to the absence of a crime event, nothing new appeared in the case. We have been saying for eight months of the trial that the competitiveness of the process is being violated, and the case is being considered with an openly accusatory bias. We constantly pointed to procedural violations: Oleg Kozlov was not even prosecuted. He appeared in the case of Larisa Kuznetsova as an intermediary, after which he was charged. But the court does not pay attention to this,” said Ms. Sergun.
