Today, December 29, 2021, D.P. Saprykin, announced by the prosecution as almost the key “assistant to the prosecution,” was interrogated at the court hearing. The witness at various times worked as Deputy General Director of PJSC Aeroflot, General Director of Transaero Airlines, and currently heads Vnukovo Airport. The witness is an eyewitness to the provision of legal assistance to Aeroflot airline by lawyers Kibets and Slivko. This legal assistance concerned complex arbitration and criminal procedures related to the Transaero airline. The witness interacted with lawyers at general meetings, and Slivko’s lawyer also assisted him during interviews with investigative authorities. He had no complaints about his work with the lawyers; assistance was provided in full. He does not know how these lawyers were hired by Aeroflot PJSC to provide legal assistance. The practice of entrusting work to external legal consultants was regular. He is not aware of any overestimation of the volume and cost of work when lawyers Kibets and Slivko provided legal assistance.
During the period when he worked as Deputy General Director of Aeroflot PJSC and supervised the legal block (2013), these lawyers were not yet involved in the work; the work was entrusted to other lawyers. He doesn’t remember the working conditions of other lawyers. Of course, lawyers should always be paid for their work in advising clients, forming a position, doing analytics, studying documents, and preparing for court hearings.
Thus, another prosecution witness gave testimony that completely exonerated the defendants. It is still not clear in the case what kind of theft we are talking about, if all the witnesses confirm that legal assistance was provided by the airline’s lawyers, they do not have any data on the overestimation of the cost of providing such assistance, and the practice of entrusting work to external legal consultants existed and has existed in PJSC Aeroflot and other state-owned companies since the early 90s.
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