Natalya Kovaleva is the founder of the Nat Pinkerton detective agency, which calls itself the largest in Moscow – 10 years on the market, 25 detectives on staff, an office half a kilometer from the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Moscow, cooperation with foreign agencies. She is a member of various detective associations, as well as the corresponding working group of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. Literally a month before her arrest by the Basmanny Court (under Part 2 of Article 291), Kovaleva was sentenced to a fine and a three-year ban on detective work for four counts of illegally obtaining and disclosing tax secrets (Part 3 of Article 183). Based on the verdict, one episode was recorded through an official contract with a detective agency, and the rest were pulled out by the investigation from Kovaleva’s correspondence in a telegram.
Nikolai Khamutovsky was arrested first, even before the case was raised to the federal level, on charges of mediation (Part 2 of Article 291.1). Khamutovsky, a former security officer, had a private detective’s license from 2007 to 2017, and was the founder of the Themis agency, which was led by Kovaleva. Initially, the Savelovsky court, despite the investigators’ arguments about Khamutovsky’s foreign residence permit, refused to “guard” him and sent him under house arrest. But the Moscow City Court corrected the unauthorized humanism and transferred the accused to a pre-trial detention center.
In addition to the detectives, the investigation previously registered three tax officers in the organized crime group of the Federal Tax Service; they are charged with a group bribe (clause “a”, part 5 of Article 290).
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