In the center of attention is the same Kushchevka, where the Pokrovskys acquired part of the lands of the so-called gang of tsapoks. This is how the era of the second redistribution of the expensive Kuban land ends — when the brazen bandits were first replaced by caring «statesmen». Rape murders were replaced by criminal cases, «showdowns» — by court decisions, «graters» — by press releases.
And now they have come for these too.
Kushchevskaya. Photo: Anna Artemyeva / «New»
In the summer of 2021, the former judge of the Arbitration Court of the Rostov Region, Svetlana Martynova, who is serving a 7-year sentence for major fraud, transmitted audio recordings from the pre-trial detention center through lawyers, in which she described in detail how, as a judge, she allegedly carried a bribe from Rostov to Kushchevka to her colleague — now to the chairman of the Kushchevsky district court. The money, according to Martynova, was supposedly intended for a «positive» solution in cases related to the lands of the defeated «tsapok gang». A number of former landowners said that they had lost their allotments under the threat of reprisals from the bandits, and after the trial of the criminals, they demanded the return of the land. «Expensive» Moscow lawyers helped to return the land to the villagers, the courts did not oppose. Over time, the land collected in this way ended up under the Pokrovsky concern, and Judge Martynova — in prison. But not for giving a bribe, but for fraud. An application for it was written by one of the co-owners of that very concern.
Case of Judge Martynova
— How much does our farm cost? It’s hard to say, it’s not necessary once at a time, but revenue is about a billion a year. Rubles, of course. The net profit is 200-300 million, depending on the harvest, ”says Vitaly Martynov, who for the fifth year has no access to his family enterprise — CJSC“ Mayak ”. For the fourth year in a row, third-party companies have been harvesting crops on his machinery from his 13 thousand hectares. Where the profit goes, he does not know, he only receives a tax on land.
The farm's lands are located a few kilometers from Kushchevka, but Vitaly refuses to go there: the last attempt ended with a meeting with traffic police officers. And Martynov is not allowed to meet with the police — his car, like all the family's property, has been arrested.
They do not want to talk about how the Martynovs created such a large agricultural enterprise. It is known that Vitaly's wife has been in prison for 5 years for this land.
According to the Martynov family, after the defeat of the “tsapok gang”, the former owners of land shares returned their rights to the allotments through the court, then merged into the Mayak farm and offered them to take over the enterprise for a nominal fee. The Martynovs agreed, Svetlana left her career as a judge and took up agriculture.
But one day the Pokrovsky concern appeared on the horizon with an offer to buy a farm from them for 40 million rubles, bringing in 200-300 million rubles of net profit per year. The Martynovs refused, then the co-owner of the concern, Andrei Korovaiko, wrote a statement to Martynova to the police and accused her of fraud.
Svetlana Martynova Photo: Valery Matytsin / TASS
According to Korovaiko, in 2011 Martynova, being a judge of the Arbitration Court of the Rostov Region, offered him for 52 million rubles to help through the courts return to the former owners of the land of the Mayak Kommunizma state farm, which became part of the Arteks-Agro «. Martynova did not give receipts, so as not to be compromised, Korovaiko said in court. He under oath stated that he paid Martynova money when “correct decisions” were made in the courts, in the hope that later she would “persuade” the shareholders to place the new enterprise under the control of the “Pokrovskys”. But that did not happen.
The statement that the businessman, according to him, paid for the adoption of the court decisions he needed and that this was said in court, did not interest any of the law enforcement officers.
In the village, the judge's conflict with the concern is described briefly: she was asked to get the land, and the judge decided not to give the booty, for which she paid.
The court found Martynova guilty and in 2017 sent to prison for 7 years. In 2019, another criminal case was initiated against her — on the illegal withdrawal of money from the accounts of the convicted mother of bandits, Nadezhda Tsapok. Then the former judge went for broke and told how she “worked” with Andrei Korovaiko and Arkady Chebanov, co-owners of the Pokrovsky concern. Chebanov's wife Larisa at that time also worked as an arbitration judge.
Martynova transmitted audio recordings with her confession through lawyers. The authenticity of the voice was confirmed by the relatives of the convict.
The confession turned out to be spectacular.
Land turnover
The events described in the statement of the ex-judge refer to 2011, when Anna Ivanovna Danko, an 81-year-old pensioner from Kushchevskaya, demanded that a long-standing transaction on the purchase of 5,000 hectares for the Arteks-Agro enterprise of tsapkov be declared illegal.
After the collapse of the USSR, like most employees of state farms, Anna Ivanovna received a land share — 6.33 hectares. Three decades later, with the help of Moscow lawyers, the pensioner was able to convince Judge Anosova that she had the primary right to buy adjacent plots. And if it were not for the arbitrariness of the «tsapok», it could well have built a successful agricultural business. She estimated her lost profits at 300 million rubles. The Kushchevsky court fully satisfied this incredible claim, and 10 years later Judge Martynova told in her “confession” how it was.
“Koravaiko told (me) that they could not“ find a common language ”with Judge Anosov,” says Svetlana Martynova on the audio recording. — Korovaiko asked me to talk to Anosov, and if he agrees to make a decision in favor of Danko, then they will pay as much as Anosov says.
Martynova agreed.
— I conveyed to him (Anosov — E.R. ) the words of Korovaiko, to which Anosov said that he himself “does not solve such issues”, he will consult with the chairman V.V. Seroshtan, and if he gives the go-ahead, then he, Anosov, will not mind, — she recalls. Further on the audio recording, Martynova tells how, a few days later, in her Mazda, she allegedly took Anosova to Kushchevskaya 5 million rubles received from Korovaiko.
Kushchevskaya resembles a gigantic legal anomaly, over the territory of which the laws of the state are refracted, losing both letters and spirit, and sometimes even meaning.
Anna Danko received 5,300 hectares of land and 300 million rubles of compensation, but in 2018 she died the same modest pensioner. Shortly before that, the Kushchevsky court took away the hectares she had received, she was declared bankrupt and left for the next world without paying the land tax for two years. The lawyer who helped the woman pull off the deal was sentenced to 8 years in 2015 for fraud.
The land of «grandmother Danko» was at the disposal of «Mayak», but «Mayak» itself did not give rest to the «Pokrovsky», says Martynova.
Andrey Korovaiko (center). Photo: RIA Novosti
“There was no question of any payment,” she recalls on the audio recording of the 2012 event, describing how Korovaiko drove up to her, a judge of the Rostov Regional Arbitration Court, to work and again began to demand to re-register the shares of CJSC Mayak. — When I got out of the car, I saw two men of Caucasian appearance, athletic build, one with a beard walking across to me. They called me by my first name and patronymic, took me by the arms and said literally literally: “We will monitor your daughter until tomorrow. Try to get the deal done tomorrow. » They named the institute, faculty and group my daughter is studying in. From which I understood that I was being watched for a long time. Later I learned that Korovaiko's wife, Irina Rukavishnikova, held the post of dean of the law faculty where my daughter studied.
After Martynova's arrest in 2017, Mayak was declared bankrupt due to a debt of 1.7 million rubles, and its former director, Vitaly Koshenok, went to prison for signing an allegedly unprofitable contract for sublease of land. Lost profits were calculated until 2027, and Koshenka was jailed for 7 years for abuse. It is noteworthy that the case of the Kuban farmer for some reason was handled by the Investigative Department of the TFR in the Rostov region, and not in the Krasnodar Territory.
The first thing that the bankruptcy trustee Khasanov did when he got the Mayak land under management was to hire one of Pokrovsky's companies to harvest the crops. In August of this year, Khasanov published data on Mayak's debtors in the EFRSB. Of the 828.3 million rubles, at least 560 million rubles were owed to Mayak by the companies associated with the Pokrovsky concern — LLC TD Concern Pokrovsky and LLC Agrocomplex Kushchevsky.
All these years behind bars Martynova continues to hold the defense and does not give up the land, although, according to her, the pressure continues.
— The next day after the arrest, investigator Magomedov came to me. He said that the measure of restraint would be changed immediately, and the case would be dropped due to exonerating circumstances, if I “behave correctly,” Martynova says. — For one of the conversations, Magomedov brought Korovaiko to the pre-trial detention center. Without carrying out any investigative actions, he left me alone with him in the office of investigative actions and recommended «to negotiate peacefully.» In a conversation, Korovaiko said that out of such inmates as me, he and Chebanov, they could make a gallery with portraits, and if I disagree, I would die in this prison. I refused to fulfill the demands of Korovaiko, about which he immediately told Colonel Magomedov, calling him into the office. Magomedov told me that I was going to jump, that he would take into custody my sick father, and while he was dying in the cell, I would have to think in the cell which was more dear to me — my father or shares. A couple of weeks later, some of the witnesses changed their testimony, saying that they had transferred 3 million rubles not to me, but to my father. (…) The investigators blackmailed me that if I did not change my position, they would get my father taken into custody, and then they would find something for the rest of my family members.
«I thought the court would sort it out …»
We meet with the convicted woman's father, Ivan Gavrilovich Kolesnikov, in the central park of Kushchevka, where he is brought in on the arrested Mazda. After the trial of the former judge, the property of her entire family was arrested. A 73-year-old man wipes away his tears, struggling to fetch fragments of interrogations from his memory.
— No evidence. Nothing. They say a white «Niva». They don't remember the number. That, they say, they brought and gave me 3 million. No receipt, nothing. The lawyer asks: «Did you count the money?» They say: «No.» The director of the cafe says that I am 65 meters, and I am 83 meters. I speak to the investigator, but he does not listen. I thought the court would sort it out. And there is a conveyor.
A plowed field near Kushchevskaya. Photo: RIA Novosti
While the investigation was underway, the man was locked up for 4 days in a psychiatric dispensary — it seemed to investigators that Ivan Gavrilovich was not himself, since he did not remember the circumstances of receiving money from Andrei Korovaiko's assistants.
— I haven't slept for four days — two drug addicts, two real madmen nearby. — The judge's father pleaded not guilty and received a 4-year suspended sentence.
But «Mayak» was not the only farm that interested the «Pokrovskys». In addition to him, Slava Kubani and Agrocomplex Kushchevsky operated in the region, the owners of which were indirectly associated with the defeated Kushchevskaya gang, and therefore became easy prey for the mysterious «warriors of Kushchevskaya justice.»
One after another, accusations of serious crimes, which were ashamed to be doubted, fell on the landowners —
the massacre in Kushchevka was so terrible that the mention of any involvement in the «tsapoks» made people guilty in the eyes of society. In the local media, the topic of «tsapki and their non-beats» was constantly exaggerated. The investigators only had to bring at least some basis under the accusations, and they successfully coped with this.
Plenipotentiary Concern
The exact date of birth of «Pokrovsky» — the enterprise, firm or person from which it all began, is not in the official history of the concern. There is only a date: from 2000 to 2003, someone implemented a number of construction projects in Rostov-on-Don and the Tuapse region. And then suddenly the Konevskoy meat processing plant appears at the concern.
Only later it will become known that after the death of the former owner, 60% of the shares of the plant were suddenly at the disposal of the family of the first plenipotentiary of the President of Russia in the Southern Federal District, General of the Army Viktor Kazantsev. In 2006, Kazantsev decides to settle financial accounts with his ex-wife and through the court will demand that control over the plant be returned to him. This is how the history of the plant and the name of the general's assistant, Andrei Korovaiko, will come to light.
Korovaiko became a federal inspector of the embassy at the age of 28, before that he was an assistant professor at the department of jurisprudence at the Russian State University of Economics, where his wife Irina Rukavishnikova worked as the dean of the law faculty, now a member of the Federation Council from the Rostov region. Presumably in 2011, the couple divorced, they have a common child, who, in theory, is one of the heirs of a giant empire.
Irina Rukavishnikova. Photo: Sergey Fadeichev / TASS
At the end of 2020, the revenue of the «empire» amounted to 34 billion rubles, the net profit increased by 87% — up to 5.5 billion. The volume of gross agricultural production exceeded 2.5 million tons. The company said it plans to increase its revenue to RUB 37.5 billion in 2021. The concern, which controls 240 thousand hectares, is included in the list of the six largest landowners in Russia in terms of the value of a land bank in the rating of the auditing company BEFL.
Grain, sugar, meat processing, real estate and even the production of electrical equipment — the concern includes 35 enterprises. All of them are located in the Southern Federal District, where in 2000 President Putin appointed General Kazantsev as his plenipotentiary. By the way, the court returned 59.6% of the shares of the meat processing plant to the general, but now, according to open data, 99% of the enterprise belongs to the son of Arkady Chebanov, and 1% belongs to Andrey Korovaiko.
Bloody land
Kazantsev left his post and retired in 2004. If you believe the materials of the court, this time was the heyday of the Tsapok family, who established their own rules in Kushchevskaya. Their enterprise grew with land plots, and all the complaints of local residents about threats and reprisals were shelved by law enforcement officers of all levels. Until November 4, 12 people were killed in the house of the farmer Server Ametov.
The investigation established that the main motive for the crime was Sergei Tsapok's revenge for the murder of his older brother eight years ago. And also the desire to deal with Ametov, who «undermined the authority» of the leader. The arrested Tsapok was sent to the Vladikavkaz pre-trial detention center, from which, according to the stories of the villagers, he returned with his front teeth knocked out, meekly pleaded guilty and, during the investigative experiment, told and showed how he cut and killed people in Ametov's house.
In 2014, Tsapok died of a heart attack in a prison cell. Following one after another, three of his accomplices took their own lives.
The “Gang of Tsapoks” was convicted on 40 counts, including organization and participation in 19 murders, but the court did not see any “economic” component in their activities. It seemed that the gang was created and terrorized the village for 15 years in order to kill and rape, and not at all in order to create one of the largest agricultural enterprises in southern Russia with the help of violence.
«The long-term raiding of the gang, as a result of which the Tsapkovsky» Arteks-Agro «(only officially — 17 thousand hectares) and the podtsapkovsky» Slava Kubani «,» North Kuban «,» DVV-Agro «and» Yug-Agrotekhnika » without attention. The investigation in the indictment even motivates such indifference to the cases of firms — they say, the firms were run by the relatives of the bandits who knew nothing about the activities of the gang, «Novaya Gazeta wrote back in 2012, following the judicial investigation.
The lack of a legal assessment — which of the criminals, when and how much took away the land from local residents — «against the background» of 19 corpses did not seem like a serious omission at that time.
At the time of the massacre on November 4, the Tsapok family, through the farms they controlled, managed a land bank of 63 thousand hectares, of which 5.3 thousand hectares belonged personally to the mother of the gang leader, Nadezhda Tsapok. The rest is, as a rule, land shares of local residents, leased to agricultural enterprises.
After the trial of the gang, 50 thousand hectares of land were at the disposal of the «agricultural complex» of the family of the former governor of the Krasnodar Territory, Alexander Tkachev. And because of the war for the rest of the land, some of the villagers ended up in prison, several were under investigation, one was forced to flee the country.
Including the victims of the «new order» were Rostov and Krasnodar journalists, who were interested in the activity of the Pokrovsky concern to «restore justice» in Kushchevskaya and not only.
War on journalists
Rostov journalist Evgeny Mikhailov has been following the concern's activities for six years. He believes that the tragedy of Kushchevskaya has become a bogey that has been waving in front of the public for 10 years, distracting from the real state of affairs in the village.
Evgeny Mikhailov. Photos from social networks
— With this tragedy, it seems to me, they were very «lucky», although I do not believe in such «luck»: the crime was so monstrous that this blood was enough for 10 years of a completely successful war for the remaining allotments. Look who is cultivating the land of the Kushchevsky Agrocomplex, the Mayak CJSC — all these “accomplices of the bloody Tsapkovskaya gang,” the Pokrovskys, says Mikhailov.
Rostov and Krasnodar journalists know perfectly well how the interest in the affairs of the Pokrovsky concern ends. On November 15, 2019, officers from the Rostov-on-Don Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (!) Came to the office of the Krasnodar edition of Yug Times with a search. The search took place within the framework of a criminal case initiated in 2017 (!) Against an unidentified person who, in an unidentified place and at an unidentified time, “posted articles, the text of which contains negative information, and thereby defame the honor and dignity of A.V. ., Echkalova SN, which also undermines the business reputation of CJSC Concern Pokrovsky.
At the same time, the investigation had no complaints against the Yug Times — the slander was posted by Promindustriya LLC, which has nothing to do with the media. But the operatives had many questions to the editor-in-chief of the Yug Times Marina Tugaeva and journalist Andrei Koshik for a series of publications about the concern's methods of work in 2016-2017. The methods were so ambiguous that they provoked the famous «tractor march», when several dozen Kuban farmers on tractors decided to move to Moscow to pay attention to the arbitrariness and the seizure of land shares, including in favor of the Pokrovsky concern.
The participants of the march in Rostov were stopped by the security forces, and later one of its organizers, Aleksey Volchenko, who initially harshly criticized the Pokrovskys, said that he had organized the tractor movement for money and with the mediation of journalists.
Before that, however, Volchenko spent several days in a temporary detention facility, where he ended up for alimony debts. The rebel left the cell as a different person. And after the searches of the Kuban journalists were carried out, he decided to publicly repent.
— In the spring of 2017, journalist Andrei Koshik contacted me in Krasnodar, who introduced himself as a journalist for the Yug Times and through his influential contacts promised to help with solving a number of problems, both mine and other farmers. Instead, he put forward a condition: I must participate in organizing a slanderous campaign against the Pokrovsky concern and its leadership, as Volchenko said at a press conference in Moscow organized by the well-known Moscow lawyer Sergei Zhorin, who often appears in processes affecting interests concern «Pokrovsky». — Koshik said that the customers of the slander are Fedor Streltsov, the owner of Agrocomplex Kushchevsky LLC from the village of Kushchevskaya, and other influential persons who are interested in squeezing the enterprises of the Pokrovsky concern out of the economy of the Krasnodar Territory. To do this, it is necessary to create problems for the Pokrovsky concern in business in any way, a lot of money has been allocated for this, for which Koshik must find dummy people so that they can appear in the media and the Internet for money with deliberately false accusations of the concern's management of various crimes. Koshik handed me 20 thousand rubles and a slanderous speech prepared in advance, and also organized my video filming, which he then posted on the Internet.
In 2019, both journalists were charged with libel.
In January 2020, the prosecutor's office of the Rostov region recognized the search in the editorial office of the Yug Times as illegal, but this did not affect the case of the Kuban journalists.
— While the case is hanging, since the end of last year, no investigative actions have been carried out with me and Tugaeva. I still have the status of an accused, ”Koshyk told Novaya Gazeta.
In the spring of 2021, a lawyer named Arakelyan wrote a statement to the Rostov Center for Countering Extremism demanding that the author of this material and three other Rostov journalists be prosecuted for maintaining anonymous telegram channels, which discuss the cases of the Pokrovsky concern, the identity of its owners, as well as is placed, according to the author of the denunciation, information of an extremist nature.
The journalists were summoned for a conversation, and a week later, on April 6, lawyers working with the Pokrovsky concern, Genrikh Khachaturov, Vladislav Brazhnikov and Alexander Voynalovich, as well as the deputy director of Agrocomplex Kushchevsky, Alexander Glazyrin, were detained in Moscow. The central office of the TFR opened a criminal case against them on extortion (Article 163 of the Criminal Code), as well as on bribery or coercion to testify or refuse to testify (Article 309 of the Criminal Code). The head of the concern's security service, Sergei Echkalov, escaped arrest — he was put on the federal wanted list. The persons involved in the criminal case are also the director of the concern and its main owner Andrei Korovaiko and his partner Arkady Chebanov. However, they have not yet been detained. According to some reports, the investigation believes that they extorted land plots from farmers, forcing them to refuse to testify on these facts, — immediately after the arrest, Kommersant wrote, citing its sources in law enforcement agencies.
Wrong turn
At what point the repressive machine turned against the employees and owners of the powerful concern, it is difficult to say now. The wife of one of the members of the Tsapkovskaya gang, Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz, Natalya Strishnyaya, officially wrote a statement to the Pokrovskys. Tsepovyaz — a former deputy of the district council, United Russia party and Tsapok's right hand — first got off with a fine for harboring a gang, and then received 20 years for complicity. The general public remembered him for his photographs with crabs and barbecue «in the zone».
Natalia Strishnyaya. Photo: Valery Matytsin / TASS
After her husband's arrest, Natalya managed to keep the Slava Kubani enterprise. She divorced Tsepovyaz, regained her property and maiden name, and continued to manage the holding. But in 2019 they came for her: Kushchevsky farmer Alexander Isyuk «remembered» that Strishnyaya was directly involved in the criminal activities of the «tsapoks» and extorted money from him. Strishnya was placed in a pre-trial detention center, despite the oncological diagnosis.