Moscow City Court cancelled the absence arrest. absentee arrest former deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation from the Murmansk region and head of the Novik industrial group Alexey Lyashchenko. It is reported by Kommersant.
It is noted that the appellate instance found in the decision of the Basmanny District Court “significant” and “irremovable” violations of both the rights of the participants in the process and the judicial procedure.
Alexei Lyashchenko’s lawyers argued that the arrest in absentia was illegal and groundless. They pointed out the Investigative Committee's unsubstantiated arguments, which the Basmanny District Court accepted without verification, violating article 108 of the Code of Criminal Procedure “Detention”.
In addition, Aleksey Lyashchenko’s lawyers calculated that the qualification of the actions of the head “Novika” as non-payment of wages, which entailed grave consequences, is not supported by the materials of the case and was artificial. Such a qualification transferred the actions of Alexei Lyashchenko to the category of crimes of medium gravity, which was also used by the investigation in court as an argument to justify the arrest. According to the defenders, the court did not verify the involvement of the ex-deputy in the crime imputed to him and did not give an objective assessment of the validity of the charges against him.
Aleksey Lyashchenko himself is in the United Arab Emirates. One of the main arguments of the defense was the absence in the UAE Criminal Code of an article related to non-payment of wages to its employees. Therefore, putting the former State Duma deputy on the international wanted list was pointless, since the Emirates will not arrest and extradite him.
The reasons for canceling the arrest in absentia were also the lack of proper notification of Aleksey Lyashchenko about the conduct of investigative actions with him, which is confirmed by the case materials, and the violation of the special procedure for initiating such cases and proceedings on them, since Aleksey Lyashchenko was at that time an acting deputy of the State Duma .
The appellate instance listened to the views of the parties and came to the conclusion that the Basmanny Court committed significant violations of the criminal procedure law, which led both to the deprivation or restriction of the guaranteed rights of participants in criminal proceedings, and to non-compliance with the procedure of legal proceedings.
Since the Moscow City Court considered the above violations to be irremediable within its competence, it was decided to return the case materials to the district court for a new trial, but in a different composition of the court. The Investigative Committee has not yet begun to petition for the arrest in absentia of Alexei Lyashchenko.
Alexei Lyashchenko’s company “Novik” was involved in maintaining, repairing, and restoring the technical readiness of ships and other vessels. The company also had production and technical bases, including the Northern base in Murmansk. In 2019, Novik Industrial Group OJSC began bankruptcy proceedings. According to investigators, the former State Duma deputy from the Murmansk region did not pay more than 200 million rubles to his employees.
