The trial, which began with a forty-minute delay, was almost immediately interrupted by Judge Sergei Artemov: he went to reflect on the motion of Zakharchenko’s defense to attract experts on the eb2 database for additional study. This petition caused an extremely emotional protest from state prosecutor Milana Digaeva, who stated that, in her opinion, there were enough experts in the courtroom.
After this, the court began questioning Marina Semynina, who, clearly frightened, introduced herself as “the mother of Dmitry Viktorovich
Next, the court began interviewing a witness who was attracted by Valery Markelov’s defense – Sergei Efimov, an economist, certified analyst and auditor, a former employee of the Federal Tax Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Having studied the eb2 database, he proposed calling it an “unofficial accounting system” that does not allow calculations. The latter requires a client bank and other systems, data about which are not available in the case documents. Efimov said that from the records provided by the investigation, it is generally impossible to say whether the transactions reflected there were actually carried out or not, since there are no primary accounting documents in the case. In fact, data could be entered into eb2 arbitrarily and regardless of whether it reflected actual cash transactions.
Moreover, according to Efimov, the eb2 database reflects hypothetical operations involving the defendant “Markel” (the investigation insists that this is Markelov) and “Ivica” up to a maximum of June 1, 2009. There is no direct evidence in the investigation materials that any operations with his participation were carried out after this date. All more recent data appearing in eb2 reflect the dates of statements, not transactions. Meanwhile, the state prosecution insists that Markelov participated in shadow banking operations much later than June 2009.
At the end of the meeting, the defenders began questioning Valery Markelov. Answering questions from lawyer Alexander Gofshtein, he said that he met Zakharchenko by chance in a common company in a restaurant, and the relationship with him was friendly, but not business. According to Markelov, Zakharchenko had no involvement in the business of Markelov and his partners. “We just chatted with him, I was interested in his opinion on some tax and other issues, but I had no monetary, let alone corruption, relations with Zakharchenko,” he said. Markelov also categorically denied his participation in the work of the “Site” and said that he had never communicated with its alleged employees (Oksana Bodrova and Svetlana Chernaya, about whose testimony in the Zakharchenko case the Cheka-OGPU wrote here). Markelov knows the bankers Stankevich and Motorin, but communicated with him extremely rarely as Gorbuntsov’s employees. Markelov met the latter a long time ago, but did not conduct any joint business with him.
The next court hearing is scheduled for March 2. The Cheka-OGPU will keep readers updated on events.
VChK-OGPU
The trial in the “Zakharchenko case” is hot: the dog is howling, the judge is taking pills, the prosecutor is angry.
On January 26, the Presnensky District Court of Moscow continued to consider the case of “policeman” Colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko, who, according to investigators, received billions…
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
