The story began in 2022, when the Belarusian company ATA Cars turned to car transporter, Rostov resident Alexander Osipov, with a request to provide a professional service for transporting in Russia several luxury cars ordered in Europe for an amount of over 115 million rubles. As a result, numerous Range Rovers, and along with them Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Teslas, were technically registered to the denominations of the driver, including Osipov’s mother. After getting to Russia, the cars suddenly “got lost” in the vastness of the St. Petersburg car market – in other words, the ferryman Osipov decided to simply cheat his partner-customers and not re-register the cars to potential buyers.
After the Belarusian company contacted law enforcement agencies, a criminal case was opened against Osipov for fraud (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), and the cars themselves were found and arrested during the investigation. Technically, they were placed in storage at a car dealership in St. Petersburg.
A year later, the case was suddenly closed by the investigator of the Investigative Committee for the Moskovsky district of St. Petersburg, Anna Matyushenko, due to the lack of corpus delicti: the described precedent supposedly applies only to Belarusian jurisdiction, but in Russian realities there is no crime.
But the investigator’s initiative did not end there: she personally arrived at the car dealership where the seized cars were located to help her ward Osipov, a defendant in the criminal case, rescue property that did not belong to him. Despite the emotional dialogue with the management of the car dealership, not a single power of attorney for Osipov (from his own nominees) was provided – probably since Osipov himself is currently listed as a suspect in another criminal case of fraud in Moscow, and is also undergoing bankruptcy proceedings due to for FSSP claims for 45 million rubles.
The leadership of the Investigative Committee should especially “note” the dedication with which investigator Matyushenko, in his working hours, seeks so-called justice for ordinary citizens, just yesterday “a few scammers.”
“ВЧК ОГПУ”