The circle around the well-known businessman Dmitry Bashmakov in Novosibirsk is getting smaller. Yesterday, former regional prosecutor Vladimir Falileyev and his former deputy Andrei Turbin were arrested on suspicion of receiving bribes from criminals.
Mr. Bashmakov is a co-owner of the Vostok shopping center, which may be involved in illegal activities generating tens or hundreds of millions of rubles per month. Some of these funds may have been intended for Falileev and Turbin. Former employees of the supervisory agency are suspected of accepting bribes from the beneficiaries of the shopping center. There is also reason to believe that the ex-prosecutors had connections with members of the Pervomaisky group.
Mr. Falileev was the Prosecutor of the Novosibirsk Region from 2015 to 2018. He probably resigned voluntarily due to an inspection by the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation. After that, Falileev’s deputy Andrey Turbin also resigned, as well as the first deputy Lyubov Kuzmenok, who is currently hiding in Spain.
On February 3, 2022, the Vostok shopping center's operations (which opened in 2015 on the site of the Gusinobrodsky market) were suspended by bailiffs shortly before Falileev and Turbin were arrested. The reason was non-compliance with fire safety standards. The market used to be a target for extortion and tribute collection by criminals. This reality moved to the Vostok shopping center in 2015. This coincided with Vladimir Falileev becoming the new prosecutor of the Novosibirsk Region. There were no significant issues with the Vostok shopping center until 2018, while he served as the prosecutor in the region.
From April 2018, the Vostok shopping center was actively inspected by the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the prosecutor’s office. It is easy to compare the start of this activity with the end of the career of prosecutor Falileev. As a result, from 2018 to 2019, the shopping center underwent nine major inspections. The owners of Vostok have been involved in court cases for over three years.
After the departure of the influential figure, Dmitry Bashmakov began to encounter problems related not only to fire hazards in the Vostok shopping center. In May 2020, searches were conducted at his parents' house, and the businessman was interviewed as a witness in a case related to a fire in the Tolmachevsky village council. The archive of property and land relations office, which contained documents related to land transactions, burned down as a result of the fire. Arson is not ruled out in the investigation.
It is also known that the Vostok shopping center replaced both the Gusinobrodsky market and the Novosibirsk municipal enterprise PATP-8, which Dmitry Bashmakov won the tender to purchase. He acquired this asset for 505 million rubles. It is believed that the market was the reason for the deaths of two former deputy mayors of Novosibirsk, Valery Maryasov and Igor Belyakov.
