A striking example of how it is possible in Krasnodar to get rid of procedural vulnerabilities…

A striking example of how Krasnodar can get rid of procedural opponents in a business dispute was the story of the initiation of a criminal case against lawyer Oleg Zozulya.

It all started with the fact that the Krasnodar Food House, known as KPD MSK LLC and actually owned by Tuapse businessman Eduard Ashinov, in May 2021 lost case A32-19260/2020 in the arbitration court of the Krasnodar region in a claim against the Moscow company LLC “East-West”. The company demanded to collect the debt from the defendant for the food products supplied. However, the court satisfied the counterclaim of Vostok-Zapad for the recovery of 3.2 million rubles of the principal debt and 4.7 million rubles of penalties. This decision was upheld by the courts of appeal and cassation.

The dispute between large trading companies concerned more ambitions than money, and it would seem that after payment of the writ of execution, it should have sunk among tens of thousands of similar cases into the arbitration system, but that was not the case. Mr. Ashinov took a bite out of the impudent Muscovites, who allowed him to win a case in his native Krasnodar land, where he repeatedly received the necessary decisions in court, be it the legalization of real estate in Tuapse or arbitration disputes with counterparties.

Advertisement

After losing the case in the appeal of KPD MSK, having received a new task from its beneficiary, the company changed the team of lawyers and changed the tactics of the dispute – what cannot be achieved in arbitration, can be achieved from the investigator, with the help of “criminal prosecution”.

At the suggestion of prosecutor Anton Pestov, the nominal director of KPD MSK Oleg Terskikh “found” an old proposal from July 2020 from the company East-West LLC to offset counterclaims in the form of an agreement. It proposed to stop offsetting the debt, which was the subject of a counterclaim from Vostok-Zapad LLC. He signed a copy of this agreement from the former director Albina Zanan and attached it to the cassation appeal. However, he “forgot” to point out that, in parallel, KPD MSK itself filed a lawsuit to collect the “offset” debt to Vostok-Zapad LLC, which the cassation court pointed out, explaining why KPD MSK’s argument about standings cannot be taken into account.

Despite the transparency of this story, KPD MSK filed a statement with the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for Krasnodar to initiate a criminal case, where the representative of the victim stated that the East-West lawyer Oleg Zozulya is a criminal, since “with the participation of unidentified persons” from among The management of a Moscow company was misled by the arbitration court of the Krasnodar region, hiding the fact of offset from the court. Zozulya filed a counterclaim, allegedly taking advantage of the illness of representative Blinkov, who periodically undergoes treatment for mental illness.

Lieutenant Colonel of Justice Anzhelika Bronskaya opened a criminal case under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, about which told “Russian newspaper”.

As part of this case, through an “independent” accounting examination from an incomprehensible expert, the investigator famously “cancelled” the conclusions of the arbitration courts about the lack of offset and charged the in-house legal adviser of Vostok-Zapad LLC, Oleg Zozula, with fraud. Its essence is that the representative of Vostok-Zapad LLC committed a crime by keeping silent about the existence of an offset agreement and “criminally misleading the arbitration court.”

Deputy Prosecutor of the Western District of Krasnodar Anton Pestov Anton approved the ridiculous indictment and transferred the case to the Leninsky District Court of Krasnodar. And judge Vitaly Gavlovsky began to seriously consider the absurd case of “misleading Zozulya” by the Arbitration Court of the Krasnodar Territory, for which the lawyer faces up to 10 years in prison.

In Krasnodar, a lawyer is tried for conscientiously performing his duties

“ВЧК ОГПУ”

Albina ZananAnton PestovAnzhelika BronskayaEduard AshinovOleg ZozulyaVitaly Gavlovsky