Bulk brothers business of ivy rocher. Opg bulk

Lawyer Ilya Remeslo, who was present at the hearing of the case of Yves Rocher, examines the main arguments of the defense and the accusation, and also shares interesting points of the court, which the liberal media are silent about.

Liberal media, which posted their materials on Friday's debate, "tactfully" bypassed many points of the meeting. And they did it not by accident. A concrete example: the Navalny-friendly Mediazona website is posting a recording of yesterday's meeting. It contains the full speeches of the defendants and their lawyers. But what the victims (Yves Rocher's company) said, the prosecution and the court were not posted. Indeed, why bother with the appearance of objectivity? A similar situation is on the "Echo of Moscow", and many other resources.

The trial began with the announcement of the testimony of the former CEO of Yves Rocher Bruno Leproux. And here the first surprise awaited us. It turns out that the filing of an application for Navalny was coordinated by Leproux with the French founders Yves Rocher.

However, this did not raise any special doubts before, but now it has received documentary confirmation.

The fact that the French agreed to prosecute Navalny once again confirms that the statement was written by Yves Rocher of his own free will. Bruno Leproux also said that Yves Rocher was constantly faced with the problem of timely receiving and sending parcels by mail. Oleg Navalny undertook to solve this problem, presenting Glavpodpiska as a company having connections with the management of the Russian Post. At the same time, Yves Rocher did not know that Oleg was simultaneously the beneficiary of the Main Subscription. The suspicions that arose prompted them to apply to the ICR.

Further in the debate, representatives of the prosecution spoke. In general, previously known facts were announced. But one thing immediately drew attention to itself - the registration of the company Glavpodiska on a figurehead (Zaprudsky), who was also paid for this. At the same time, as Zaprudsky says, all questions about the company were solved by Alexey Navalny, to whom he handed over the documents. In connection with the participation of the dummy director, Navalny neglected issues of legality: for example, a number of signatures on the founding documents of the company were forged. And even after the company passed to Navalny's relatives in 2011, he continued to resolve issues regarding it and signed documents. The founder was also a shell company - the Cypriot offshore Alortag, which Navalny personally acquired (which he does not deny). Thus, Alexey conveyed warm greetings to the fighters against corruption and the offshore economy.

Fix these facts, we will come back to them when we analyze the position of the defense.

A representative of the victims, the Yves Rocher company, also spoke in the debate. He fully confirmed the position of the prosecution, said that his company is not going to abandon claims against the defendants. The contract with Navalny's company was concluded due to problems at the post office, which could not receive parcels on time, which was critical for Yves Rocher's business. If everything was normal at the post office, Yves Rocher would never have signed an agreement with Navalny's firm.

In fact, the victim fully confirmed everything that I have repeatedly written about: the company of Yves Rocher was cut off the oxygen and deceived them, they did not refuse claims despite all the pressure exerted.

Navalny's lawyers, in turn, focused not on refuting the foundation of the accusation as a whole, but tried to break up its individual small details, in the end pretending that the charge was broken as a whole. The key arguments of Kobzev and Mikhailova were as follows:

1) Navalny has nothing to do with Glavpodiska and never managed it. The company was not created with a criminal purpose, it is a common business activity. The prosecution deliberately attributes intent to the defendants where there is none.

The question arises, how then to be with the testimony of the nominal director Zaprudsky? What about the fact that Navalny made it the founder of the offshore Alortag? For what purpose did he keep the constituent documents?

Especially the defense and Navalny himself ridiculed the term "conspiracy", which was used by the prosecution, characterizing the involvement of a nominal general director and the registration of an offshore company as the founder of Glavpodpiska. It is not very clear, however, what is funny about the position of the accusation. Indeed, why such conspiracy: if we are talking about ordinary business activities, why not just register the company for yourself and head it personally?

The defense has no answers to these questions. Navalny tried to justify himself by saying that he did not want to "shine" his name because of political activities and courts with large companies, of which he was a minority shareholder. This "explanation" is pretty easy to refute. Glavpodpiska was founded in May 2008. Navalny did not conduct any active political activity at that time, and was not even a lawyer at that time.

2) Investigators of the TFR put pressure on Yves Rocher's company, so she was forced to write a statement against Navalny.

There is not a single proof that the statement was written under pressure. This is denied by all the witnesses questioned.

However, let us examine, for example, the defense's argument about “a large volume of investigative actions” with the participation of Yves Rocher. What are these actions? Probably, searches were carried out, Yves Rocher's employees were detained and arrested, documents and seals of the company were seized, which made commercial activity impossible?

Unfortunately no. As the defense itself admits, there were only two requests for documents on Navalny's company, some of which were seized in originals, and CEO Yves Rocher was interviewed. No one was detained, not summoned for interrogation, there were no searches. How the production of such investigative actions can put pressure on the company is a big mystery.

3) Yves Rocher wrote a letter about the absence of damage to the TFR.

As I wrote earlier, Yves Rocher did not write any letter to the TFR. It was written by the administrative and financial director Melnik and addressed to the head of the company, Bruno Leproux, who did not agree with the presented calculation (since no internal audit was conducted) and decided not to abandon claims against Navalny. Further, the same letter from Melnik was given to the ICR by a lawyer, accompanied by a lengthy letter, which vaguely stated that “the authorized persons had doubts about the amount of damage”. Of course, the lawyer did not give up his claims, and none of Yves Rocher's management authorized him to do this.

It remains for us to make out the last word of the accused Navalny. The main leitmotif of the speech was statements about the political background of the persecution. Okay, let's agree with Alexey for a minute. But does the presence of a political motive mean that there is no crime? For example, the state persecutes terrorists and extremists, including on the basis of political considerations and disagreements with them. But does this stop terrorists and extremists from being such?

From the point of view of Navalny, the government is thus taking revenge on him for investigations against major officials. But this is such a slightly strange way of revenge - to create a reputation for being persecuted by the authorities, and the persecuted himself is still not in prison. Moreover, in the Kirovles case, he was removed from there the next day after the verdict - contrary to all existing norms of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, the prosecutor's office filed a complaint against itself! Not a single such case has previously been recorded in the legal practice of Russia.

Further, already in the existing case of Yves Rocher, the prosecution asked three times (!) To change the measure of restraint from house arrest to prison. And three times the court denied this, despite the irrefutable (established by the court decision) facts of violation of house arrest by Navalny. Maybe political motivation in decisions on his cases should be taken into account when she works for Navalny?

Separately, one should dwell on the following words of Navalny: “By the way, I draw your attention to the fact that little was said in the debate about the accusations of legalization. Please note that not a single person has been questioned about legalization, there are no documents. It would seem: here, legalized through the company of the parents. Have your parents been interrogated? "

And here we agree with Navalny. The prosecution never asked him simple questions, and he never answered ours:

If the transaction with Yves Rocher Vostok LLC was legal, then why were the funds received from this transaction not capitalized in accordance with the law, but withdrawn to the account of the Kobyakovskaya Wicker Weaving Factory LLC controlled by your family?

How can you explain the economic sense of concluding an agreement with OOO Kobyakovskaya Wicker Weaving Factory for renting real estate in Kobyakovo near Moscow? What entrepreneurial activity was Main Subscription Agency LLC carried out there if you were studying at Yale University at the time? What caused such a high price of the lease agreement (in comparison with similar offers in Moscow)?

What products were purchased by OOO Main Subscription Agency from OOO Kobyakovskaya Wicker Weaving Factory and what is the further fate of these products?

For what lawyer services did the Kobyakovskaya Wicker Weaving Factory, controlled by your family, pay you?

Let me remind you that 19,880,660 rubles were withdrawn to the accounts of the Kobyakovsk factory.

The following is surprising here. Not only that, Navalny himself dragged his parents into this scam, thus exposing them as potential accomplices. He also demands that the same "large volume of investigative actions" be carried out with the parents. So that his parents excuse him in this story before the investigation and court.

And of course, one cannot ignore this statement: “I will continue to fight this junta, stir up trouble, agitate, whatever you like, these people who are looking at the table. People have a legal right to rebel against this illegal, corrupt government. "

In any civilized country, including Russia, the violent, unconstitutional overthrow of the current government is a crime. As well as calls for him - the "overthrow" was not just said in the court session, there was a broadcast to a large number of people who were not participants in the process - which Navalny knew very well. By a strange coincidence, these words instantly spread in many "independent" media, which only added a degree of gravity to the committed act.

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The Navalny brothers are now also accomplices (photo taken by The New Times)

On December 20, Alexei Navalny, a member of the Opposition Coordination Council, the head of RosPil, and his younger brother (they have a difference of 7 years), deputy director of the express delivery company EMS Russian Post (a subsidiary of Russian Post), Oleg Navalny, was charged with committing crimes under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("fraud") and under Part 2 of Art. 174.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“legalization of funds or other property acquired by a person as a result of a crime”). Thus, this is the second case after Kirovles, where Alexei Navalny is the accused. But this time the Investigative Committee took up not only the oppositionist, but also his family.

Business

"In accordance with clause 9.3 of Agreement No. 1 dated August 05, 2008 for the carriage of goods and freight forwarding services," Yves Rocher Vostok "LLC by this letter notifies you of the unilateral termination of the agreement" - such a message signed by the General Director of the company " Yves Rocher Vostok "Bruno Leproux received on December 3 the company for the transportation of goods" Main Subscription Agency ", which is part of the Navalny family business, in which there is also the Kobyakovskaya wicker factory in Golitsyn near Moscow, where one store with an area of \u200b\u200b50 square meters was made on the premises free after the crisis ...

Glavpodpiska was invented in 2007. “Initially there was an idea to create a website through which everyone can subscribe to newspapers and magazines. Hence the name of the company, ”says Alexei Navalny. He did not dare to register a company for himself - he believed that any business connected with him would not be allowed to work. Therefore, the offshore company Alortag Management Limited was registered in Cyprus, which became 99% owner of the new enterprise *.

* One more formal Russian founder was needed, and Navalny called a friend of his accountant Leonid Zaprudsky, he owns 1% of Glavpodpiska.

In 2008, Navalny, or rather, his younger brother Oleg, decided to create a business that outsourced transportation - for which they used Glavpodiska, since the company, as he put it, was “lying around”. We rented a warehouse at the Kobyakovsk factory, and created a dispatch office for the transportation of goods at the warehouse.

Yves Rocher Vostok, the Russian subsidiary of the French cosmetic giant Yves Rocher, began working with Glavpodiska in the summer of 2008. According to Oleg Navalny, Yves Rocher is the third largest Russian Post client, “they send every tenth parcel in the country”. The company has a base in Yaroslavl and ships most of its products through the Yaroslavl postal sorting center. “This center could not accept all products, so Yves Rocher transported part of the parcels to Moscow on its own. I went to their managers and offered them our services, - says Oleg. - I found the company "AutoSAGA", which transported the sausage to Yaroslavl. Since their cars were returning empty anyway, they agreed to transport Yves Rocher products to Moscow for little money. Accordingly, I offered Yves Rocher a market rate that allowed us to make money. "

In 2010, Yves Rocher began using the services of Glavpodpiska carriers in one more direction - between the Yves Rocher base near St. Petersburg and the Yaroslavl branch. The cooperation lasted more than three years, and during this time there were no complaints from the client. “We have not lost a single package, we have never raised prices,” says Oleg. Nevertheless, the letter about the termination of the contract, which Navalny received on December 3, did not come as a surprise: “An acquaintance from Yves Rocher called me back in November and said that they had come from the FSB. They seized the documents, began to drag managers for interrogations - everyone who signed contracts with us. And everyone was asked: “Are you personally acquainted with Alexei Navalny? Did you take part in the rallies on Bolotnaya? "

Links of one chain

Termination notice,
which "Yves Rocher Vostok" sent
to Navalny's company on December 3

From the decree to initiate a criminal case, it follows that the next important date was December 10: “Head of the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Major General of Justice Shchukin A.V. registered in the KRSP for No. 201pr-167/12 of 10.12.2012, as well as the report of the investigator on the discovery of signs of crimes under Part 4 of Art. 59, p.p. "A", "b" part 2 of Art. 174.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, registered in the KRSP under No. 201pr-166/12 of 10.12.2012, and the materials of the procedural check, established ... "

That a criminal case has been opened,
the Navalny brothers learned from the press release of the UK
the next day

The Coordination Council of the opposition was then in full swing negotiating with the mayor's office, trying to agree on the "March of Freedom", scheduled for December 15 at Lubyanka Square. Alexey Navalny posted in his LiveJournal a video with the slogans "Stop waiting" and "We must go", which was watched by 45.5 thousand people on YouTube, and made it clear: the event will take place even if it is not approved.

After a search in his office at the Russian Post
On December 14, Oleg Navalny was summoned for interrogation

"Leprue ( general Director of Yves Rocher Vostok. - NT), apparently, pressed, - says Alexei Navalny. - Yves Rocher is a giant company, they have a bunch of shops in every city, they can be intimidated by the tax authorities, for example. He agreed. After that, the operative wrote a report on December 10, he is in the resolution under No. 201pr-166/12: they say, during the searches carried out at the Kobyakovsk factory in August of this year as part of the Kirovles case, financial transactions were discovered that had all the signs Art. 174 - "laundering". And then Leproux on the same day, December 10, wrote his statement, which in the document goes under the following serial number - 201pr-167/12. Nobody knows what damage has been done to Yves Rocher Vostok in the statement: they did not present any claims to Glavpodiska, Leproux himself is hiding and does not make contact. " On December 14, The New Times, which repeatedly tried to get commentary both in Paris (“all questions - to the Moscow office”) and in the Moscow office of Yves Rocher, received an official press communique: “We confirm the fact of contacting law enforcement agencies to protect our economic interests and interests of our shareholders. We are not entitled to comment until the end of the investigation. "

On December 20, the Navalny brothers officially
become accused in a fraud case
and money laundering

On December 13, at around 15:00, as reported by news agencies, President Vladimir Putin held a "working meeting" with the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin. Four and a half hours later, at 19:30, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against the Navalny brothers, which, however, they only learned about the next day, when the corresponding press release appeared on the website of the RF IC at 10:40 on December 14.

Searches and interrogations

On December 14, searches began at Navalny's: closer to lunch they arrived at Oleg Navalny's office at the Russian Post: “They seized 4 flash drives, a disc of singer Bjork and a disc with photographs of a honeymoon trip to Greece,” Oleg Navalny said. The search began at 13:50 and ended at 15:35. At the end of the search, he was given a summons to be summoned for interrogation: he had to appear on the same day at 16:15 to the building of the Investigative Committee in the Technical Lane. He answered all questions in the UK with a reference to Article 51 of the Constitution (“No one is obliged to testify against himself ...”).

On the same day, a search was carried out at the parent's factory in Golitsyn: “My mother's computers were taken away (they cannot even send taxes now) and her personal phone number. She did not want to give her mobile, but the investigators threatened her that they would wring her hands. She was wildly outraged. She said: "Medvedev said everything about you correctly." And they told her: "Your Medvedev is a goat himself," said Alexei Navalny.

"THIS PHENOMENON, WHICH HAS ALREADY GOT THE SCALE OF A NATIONAL DISASTER, IS CALLED ARTIFICIAL CRIMINALIZATION OF CONVENTIONAL ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES"

Accusation

On December 20, the Navalny brothers were charged. From the ruling on prosecution as a defendant:

“In the period from August 2008 to May 2011 in Moscow, Navalny OA, Navalny AA, acting as a group in a preliminary conspiracy, using the current account of OOO Main Subscription Agency controlled by them, by deception committed theft monetary funds of LLC Yves Rocher Vostok in the amount of 55,184,767 rubles. Having stolen the funds of Yves Rocher Vostok LLC in the amount of 55 184 767 rubles, Navalny O.A. and A.A. Navalny, acting by a group of persons in a preliminary conspiracy, entered into a criminal conspiracy aimed at legalizing (laundering) funds acquired as a result of their crime. "

“They confiscated documents, began to drag managers for interrogations. And everyone was always asked: did you take part in the rallies on Bolotnaya? "

The amount indicated in the case, Navalny explains, is all the money that Yves Rocher paid them under the contract for three years, and more than half of them - 31,698,750 rubles - was paid to the carrier.

“What pisses me off the most,” says Alexei Navalny, “they say that Glavpodpiska was originally registered in order to conclude an agreement with Yves Rocher and steal money from them. Therefore, they consider the entire turnover in three years to be the stolen amount, and what we paid to the carrier of goods and so on was the legalization of the stolen. "

“And I allegedly forced them to send these goods to Moscow,” adds his brother Oleg. "He said that it would be more profitable for them to give up there, and thus deceived, because the Russian Post provides everyone and everywhere the same services."

“They discovered a business transaction, and this business transaction has now been declared a fraud. They say that in this way we will bring Navalny, his mother, his brother and his father into one criminal group, ”says Alexei Navalny.

As many as 10 investigators of the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation are engaged in the case of the organized crime group Navalny, five of them are "important".

Order

Mikhail Khodorkovsky's lawyer (who, as you know, was also accused of stealing all the oil from himself) Vadim Klyuvgant, who got acquainted with the case at the request of The New Times, immediately recognized familiar phrases: “All these technologies have been worked out in one well-known model case - the "YUKOS case", these formulations were tested there and then they went for a walk in cities and villages. This phenomenon, which has already acquired the scale of a national disaster, is called artificial criminalization of ordinary business activities. " According to Klyuvgant, if there are disagreements between the contractors on the concluded agreement, this is not a subject of criminal, but civil law. Theft by fraud or embezzlement is possible only when it is not about a civil law transaction that has been executed (and even more than one year), but about the appearance of the transaction, when in fact it is “about gratuitous seizure and seizure of other people's property ". But after all, Navalny worked with Yves Rocher under a contract for three years, and there were no complaints.

“It is understandable how such victims appear, to whom they come and explain to them that they, it turns out, have suffered terrible damage, which they themselves did not suspect until a certain moment,” says Kluvgant. “We have clearly seen this in the Yukos affair.” One more thing can be added to this: the technology that the Russian authorities use in the fight against the founder of RosPil is called "hostage" - mother, father, brother and his family, all people far from politics (Oleg Navalny only once attended a rally December 10 at Bolotnaya), now they pay the bills of the opposition. So politics came for them.

Photo: Vasily Popov

The European Court of Human Rights found no political motives in the actions of the Russian law enforcement agencies in the Yves Rocher case against Alexei and Oleg Navalny. In its ruling, the Strasbourg court confirmed that the administration of justice in a criminal case could not pursue political goals.

The Yves Rocher case

Let us briefly recall the essence of this case. Alexey and Oleg Navalny were accused of embezzling more than 26 million rubles from the Yves Rocher Vostok company and over four million rubles from the Multidisciplinary Processing Company. Navalny created a shell company "Glavpodpiska", which provided services for the delivery of postage at inflated prices.

In December 2014, the Zamoskvoretsky Court of Moscow found the brothers guilty of embezzlement by fraud and money laundering of Yves Rocher and the Multidisciplinary Processing Company. According to the court's decision, Alexey Navalny received a 3.5-year suspended sentence and a fine of 500 thousand rubles. Oleg Navalny was also sentenced to 3.5 years - but, unlike his brother, to a real term, with serving his sentence in a general regime colony. He was also ordered to pay a fine, also in the amount of 500 thousand. Oleg Navalny was taken into custody in the courtroom.

In February of the following year, the Moscow City Court canceled the fine to Alexei Navalny, otherwise leaving the sentence unchanged.

ECtHR verdict

Complaints to the European Court of Human Rights were filed in January 2015. In March of the following year, the court communicated complaints under articles 6 and 7 of the Convention on Human Rights - they deal with the right to a fair trial and punishment solely on the basis of the law.

As a result: The ECHR recognized the trial against Alexey and Oleg Navalny as unfair. "The court ruled that Russia must pay each applicant 10 thousand euros in non-pecuniary damage. In addition, the Russian Federation must pay Alexey Navalny court costs in the amount of 45 thousand euros, as well as 10,971 euros and 460 thousand rubles in compensation for expenses to Oleg Navalny," said in the published decision of the ECHR.

At the same time, it is worth recalling that one of the most important arguments of Alexei Navalny and his entourage was the emphasis on the political background of the Yves Rocher case. However, such was not found in the ECHR. As noted on Tuesday in the press service of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, in its ruling, the Strasbourg court "confirmed that the administration of justice in a criminal case cannot pursue political goals."

"At the same time, the obvious inadmissibility of the complaint in this part was so obvious to the European Court that the applicants' arguments about the alleged existence of a political motive in their criminal prosecution were not even included in the subject of the study. The ECHR refused to communicate this unfounded claim to the Russian authorities," in the message.

Let us remind you that in the verdict of the ECHR in the case of embezzlement at the Kirovles enterprise, whose defendant is also Alexei Navalny, the wording about the political background was also rejected.

It is possible that the current verdict will be challenged. At least, the press service of the Ministry of Justice said that Russia does not agree with the ECHR, which discovered violations in the course of bringing Navalny to criminal responsibility in the Yves Rocher case. "We cannot agree with the position of the court on the presence of procedural violations in bringing the applicants to criminal liability and applying the norms of Russian criminal and civil legislation," the Ministry of Justice said in a statement.

The agency notes that "at present the judgment of the ECHR in the case" Navalny v. Russia "has not entered into force." "The legal position on the issue of his possible appeal to the Grand Chamber of the ECHR will be formed within three months," the ministry said.

Whether the defense of Alexei and Oleg Navalny will challenge the verdict - for example, in that part of it regarding the absence of a political background in the case - is an open question.

How this will help - or not help - the "presidential campaign" of Alexei Navalny

The answer is no way. That is, absolutely. On Tuesday, the head of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, Ella Pamfilova, said that Navalny would be able to run for head of state - but only in 2028 and not earlier. He is serving a suspended sentence in the case of embezzlement at the Kirovles enterprise. "... despite the fact that he has a suspended sentence, the qualification of his crime is a grave crime, and people who are convicted under this article do not have the right to participate in elections," Pamfilova recalled.

She emphasized that Alexei Navalny would have had the opportunity to take part in the elections if he had appealed to the Constitutional Court and took other steps to appeal against the verdict, but did not.

“They had a chance, if Navalny wanted to go to the polls, take a number of steps and say,“ That's it, we did everything possible, but it worked out or didn't work out. ”And what path are they taking? They misinterpret the laws, on the other hand they say: "Who is Pamfilova? Who is the CEC? Now we will bring out the guys whose heads have been confused, we will put pressure on the authorities, they will immediately scare us. Will I be scared? The man who went through all the hot spots, more than once looked death in the eye? I will never, under anyone's pressure, allow you to break the law, good or bad, "Pamfilova emphasized.

In the Brezhnev era, an anecdote about the years of Stalinist repressions was popular among dissidents. A stage comes to Kolyma, newcomers are taken to the barracks, old-timers are interested in:

- For what time did you get it?

- Never….

“Don’t lie,” the old-timers interrupt. - "No way" is given five years in prison, and you have "ten".

In the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow, where the trial of brothers Alexei and Oleg Navalny continues, it seems that the timelessness that is precisely described in the dissident joke is being reincarnated.

The brothers are accused of deceiving 26 million rubles from the French cosmetics company Yves Rocher. According to the prosecution, in the spring of 2008, Navalny imposed on Yves Rocher services for the transportation of goods from the Yaroslavl hub of the Russian Post. And on August 5, 2008, Yves Rocher Vostok LLC signed an agreement on the provision of freight forwarding services with the Main Subscription Agency LLC (Glavpodiska), controlled by the Navalny brothers.

Last Friday, the charge of fraudulent embezzlement of Yves Rocher's money finally collapsed. And the criminal case "Yves Rocher", which from the moment of initiation was not regarded otherwise as political ( see details in "Novaya",), has completely lost the economic "filling". On November 7, a key witness for the prosecution, CFO Christian Melnik, was questioned in court. The court officially warned the witness about criminal liability for perjury. And Melnik honestly said that Yves Rocher has no claims to the Navalny brothers and the Main Subscription Agency firm, because Yves Rocher Vostok LLC did not incur losses from cooperation with Glavpodpiska.

The testimony of the CFO of the Russian branch of the French company was not unfounded. Back at the end of 2012, Yves Rocher Vostok conducted an internal audit and prepared an analytical note, the conclusions of which were voiced by Melnik during the trial.

It turns out that the investigation as early as February 2013 found out that the Navalny brothers are not swindlers; Glavpodpiska has fulfilled all its obligations. Moreover, at prices lower than those established at that time on the transport market.

Having received the petition of the lawyer Vadim Kodol, the investigator for especially important cases, Lieutenant Colonel of Justice Roman Nesterov, who is in charge of the criminal case, should have closed it back in February 2013 and apologized to the Navalny brothers for the illegal criminal prosecution. But Nesterov is a bonded man. And he could not make a decision to terminate the criminal case, which is under the personal control of the head of the TFR Alexander Bastrykin, and the operational development of which was carried out by dozens of employees of the department's central office.

As a result, a criminal case with a dubious evidence base still reached the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow. And the judge is faced with a difficult task: how, despite the testimony of the prosecution witnesses, who do not accuse the Navalny brothers of anything, still make a guilty verdict? Unless, as in that dissident anecdote.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Alexey Navalny (standing) and (from left to right) his brother Oleg, lawyers Kirill Polozov, Vadim Kobzev and Olga Mikhailova in court.

"The Yves Rocher case" is one of several criminal cases initiated by the Investigative Committee of Russia, in which Alexei Navalny appears or is involved.

Three cases at once that grew out of the Kirovles investigation were initiated in December 2012, and the Yves Rocher case was the first of them.

The Investigative Committee claims that the Navalny brothers tricked the Russian division of Yves Rocher, as well as the Multidisciplinary Processing Company (MPK), an intermediary in transport and logistics services - their firm Main Subscription Agency (Glavpodiska) and thus stole from " Yves Rocher Vostok "26 million rubles, and the IPC - 3.8 million rubles.

Then, according to the investigation, they legalized most of these funds, fictitiously renting premises for the office of "Glavpodpiska" at the family's small "Kobyakovsky willow-weaving factory" and paying for other services and goods of the factory.

Alexey and Oleg Navalny are thus charged under part 4 of Article 159 (fraud committed by an organized group or on an especially large scale) and paragraph "a" of Part 2 of Article 174 (legalization (laundering) of money or other property acquired by other persons by criminal by a group of persons by prior agreement) of the Criminal Code of Russia.

An article on fraud provides for up to 10 years in prison, an article on laundering - up to five years.

Events

In December 2007, Alexey and Oleg Navalny created the Cyprus offshore company Alortag Management Limited. Maria Zaprudskaya became the head of this company.

On May 19, 2008, the Main Subscription Agency LLC was registered in Moscow (the abbreviated name is Glavpodpiska LLC), 99% of the authorized capital of which belonged to Alortag Management Limited, and 1% - to the accountant, father of Maria Zaprudskaya Leonid Zaprudsky, who became the general director of "Glavpodiski".

Oleg Navalny at that time worked as the head of the department of internal mailings of the branch of FSUE "Russian Post" - Automated sorting centers.

Oleg knew that the Yaroslavl Main Sorting Center (MSC) of the Russian Post could not cope with the load and systematically disrupted the processing time for postal items. He suggested that one of the major clients of the Russian Post, the Yves Rocher Vostok company, should solve this problem by entrusting the delivery of items - cosmetics ordered by clients - to Glavpodiska.

On August 5, 2008, Glavpodiska and Yves Rocher Vostok signed a contract for the carriage of goods. "Glavpodpiska" undertook to organize transportation between Moscow and Yaroslavl, as well as between St. Petersburg and Yaroslavl.

For this "Glavpodpiska" has found a subcontractor - the transport company "AutoSAGA".

Cooperation between "Glavpodiska" and "Yves Rocher Vostok" lasted more than three years, and the parties did not have any claims against each other.

In 2008, Glavpodiska entered into an agreement with the Multiprofile Processing Company (MPK), which dealt, in particular, with the processing and delivery of invoices to Rostelecom's clients. Prior to that, MPK worked with the M-City company. The MPK did not have any claims to Glavpodiska either.

In November-December 2012, the Investigative Committee of Russia conducted interrogations and searches at the Yves Rocher Vostok firm as part of the investigation of the Kirovles case. At that time, the TFR "combed" all the companies that were somehow connected or in contact with Alexei Navalny.

On December 10, the TFR received a statement from the then general director of Yves Rocher Vostok, Bruno Leproux, about the possible damage caused by cooperation with Glavpodiska. The TFR immediately opened a criminal case.

In April 2013, the ICR received a similar statement from the General Director of the IPC Sergey Shustov and initiated another case, immediately merging it with the Yves Rocher case.

In August, the Zamoskvoretsky Court began a trial in the Yves Rocher case. On December 19, the last meeting took place, the prosecution asked to sentence Alexey Navalny to 10 years in a general regime colony, and Oleg to eight years in a general regime colony, the defendants had their last word, and Judge Elena Korobchenko appointed the announcement of the verdict for January 15th.

On December 29, Navalny and their lawyers were informed that the verdict would be announced (or would begin to be announced) on December 30.

Statements by investigators and prosecutors

Investigators and prosecutors assert that Navalny created Alortag Management Limited and then Glavpodpiska "with the aim of implementing criminal intent." At the same time, according to the ICR, they made a Cypriot company the founder of Glavpodpiska, and Leonid Zaprudsky as the general director "for the purpose of co-opting."

Then, as the prosecution assures, Oleg Navalny, using his official position, knowing about the problems in the Yaroslavl MSC, tricked Yves Rocher Vostok into an unnecessary intermediary in the person of Glavpodpiska.

During the cooperation "Glavpodiska" received from "Yves Rocher Vostok" more than 55 million rubles, the investigators counted that if the branch of the French company worked directly with the transport workers from the firm "AutoSAGA", it would spend 29 million rubles. The difference is 26 million and is included in the indictment.

Oleg Navalny, according to the indictment, “reported to the IPC firm" knowingly false information that the post office does not see the need for further cooperation between the IPC and the above-mentioned organization, while insisting on concluding an agreement with OOO Main Subscription Agency. "

The Navalny brothers, according to the TFR, "legalized" the proceeds by transferring them to accounts with the parents of the family enterprise, the "Kobyakovskaya Wicker Weaving Factory" (Kobyakovo is a village near Zvenigorod, 40 km west of Moscow). The money was transferred against payment of fictitious, according to investigators, services and goods.

Alexei Navalny, according to the TFR, carried out general management of these operations, remaining "in the shadows."

The arguments of Navalny and their lawyers

Oleg and Alexei Navalny, as well as their lawyers Kirill Polozov, Vadim Kobzev and Olga Mikhailova, prove that the case is political and not even falsified: it simply does not contain any facts indicating a possible crime.

According to lawyers, investigators and prosecutors simply inserted phrases like "having a criminal intent" in the description of ordinary, legal business activities.

None of the witnesses questioned in the court - including former and current employees of Yves Rocher Vostok, MPK, Russian Post - confirmed that working with Glavpodiska caused any damage to anyone.

The only exception was the general director of the IPC Sergey Shustov - he said that he learned about the damage to his company in 3.8 million from the investigator, he himself did not check the existence of damage, but trusts the investigator.

At the same time, Natalya Berezovskaya, an employee of the MPK, assured in court that Glavpodpiska had helped out the Multidisciplinary Processing Company in due time, and it was quite profitable to work with it.

At the end of December, Bruno Leproux instructed the financial director of Yves Rocher Vostok, Christian Melnik, to carry out an internal check whether cooperation with Glavpodiska had brought any losses.

The miller calculated everything and reported to Leproux that the services of "Glavpodpiska" were even cheaper than the services of many other counterparties of "Yves Rocher Vostok".

The lawyer of "Yves Rocher Vostok" Vadim Kodol informed about this in a letter to the investigator Roman Nesterov.

Melnik confirmed his conclusions in court, and Sergei Averyanov, former director of Yves Rocher, for logistics, also supported him.

The defense argued that the claims of damage to Bruno Leproux and the IPC were written under pressure from investigators.

In court, the person with whom the case formally began - Bruno Leproux himself was never questioned. The court stated that they had not found him and therefore could not be brought to the meeting - although Leproux has been holding the post of general director of the well-known Russian firm Il de Beaute since this year and it would have been quite easy to find him, according to the defense, if desired.

The presence of an intermediary organizer of transportation, according to Navalny, lawyers and witnesses, is a completely common practice. Yves Rocher Vostok works with many such contractors.

The accused also reject the accusation that "Glavpodpiska" did not really do anything, but only transferred orders to a subcontractor, only taking the difference.

As explained in court, in particular, Oleg Navalny's lawyer Kirill Polozov, "Glavpodpiska" controlled the supply of transport, the execution of orders by drivers, independently picked up and handed over clients' products to carriers and, in the end, was responsible to clients for the timing and quality of order execution.

Oleg Navalny, according to him and the defense, did not commit anything illegal, recommending his company to the clients of the Russian Post, where he worked, as an alternative. He knew about the problems of the Yaroslavl MSC - everyone knew about them - but due to his official position he could not influence their decision in any way.

Finally, Alexei Navalny, as he himself, his brother and lawyers explain, had nothing to do with the work of Glavpodpiska. The witnesses, too, one and all assured that they had only heard about Alexei Navalny "on TV", and had not personally encountered him before the trial.