However, it was not possible to “delay” the process: the meeting began three hours late due to the evacuation of the court (the alarm turned out to be false). By the way, the accused were brought to the Presnensky court in the morning, and they were not evacuated: “apparently, the threat does not apply to them,” one of the listeners joked. The defenders of the ex-co-owner of GC “1520” Valery Markelov all this time were waiting (and, as it turned out later, they were waiting) for official confirmation of the diagnosis of “pancreatic cancer” from the Federal Penitentiary Service. Let us recall that the state prosecution asked for 12 years in prison for him, “and this,” the lawyers said before the start of the debate, “is tantamount to a death sentence, since Valery Anatolyevich requires immediate treatment, because his cancer is in an advanced stage, with numerous metastases.”
The meeting began with a speech by Zakharchenko’s defense. The lawyers repeated the arguments already presented in court that the ex-colonel’s Sochi vacation was fully paid for (850 thousand rubles were returned to the head of Gazprom-Avtomatization Avsholum Yunaev through his driver), and other accusations against him were groundless, which is why Zakharchenko should release from custody. Zakharchenko himself, in a speech, called the accusations against him “incomprehensible, absurd, contradicting the materials of the case, and the testimony was distorted by the representative of the state prosecution, Milana Digaeva.”
Before the start of the debate, Markelov’s defense attorney Alexander Gofshtein made a motion that his client, due to his health condition, should be released from the pre-trial detention center for urgent treatment, “since a serious illness may interfere with the exercise of his constitutional rights.”
In a subsequent bright and emotional 2.5-hour speech, Gofshtein said that “although the state prosecution managed to keep the intrigue during the trial, the facts exposing my client’s guilt were clearly not enough for him.” He examined in detail the contradictions of the prosecution (the Cheka-OGPU wrote about them in detail in their reports), separately noting the absence of direct incriminating testimony against Markelov, primary documentation confirming the alleged transfers through the “Ploshchadka”, even names (there are only nicknames like “Cherry” or “Partner” “) the criminals and beneficiaries of his allegedly illegal actions.
Prosecution experts analyzed the data presented on the “Site” as if it were a banking accounting system, and not an illegal database, which, being unsupported by primary financial documentation, may well be based on fiction. “Moreover, there is no evidence that we are talking about a genuine base at all, because the only person who could shed light on its origin is banker German Gorbuntsov, but he will not be able to do this because by decision of the Basmanny court he was arrested in absentia on charges of fraud,” Gofshtein said. If we accept the version of the state prosecution and analyze all the companies and individuals appearing on the “Site” for relationships, it turns out that Markelov theoretically could have been related to them only until 2009 (the so-called “first episode”, 2007-2009; “second “episode” of the accusation from 2011 to 2016 has nothing to do with Markelov at all, even at the level of assumptions), his defense lawyer said. In conclusion, he asked for his client to be fully acquitted.
The next meeting is scheduled for April 29. The Cheka-OGPU will continue to monitor developments
VChK-OGPU
On April 27, the Presnensky District Court of Moscow continued to consider the case of ex-Colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko. The investigation believes that he received billions in bribes for general patronage from the largest contractors of Russian Railways – GC 1520. On the sidelines of the court everything is becoming more persistent…
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
