Kirill Cherkalin (far left), Dmitry Frolov and Andrey Vasiliev (right)
This photo is not from the «dashing nineties». And in the picture — not a criminal brigade of real boys having a rest after the harsh everyday life. This photo was taken in 2005. On it — the guys who went in for sports together, went to nature — to barbecue and fishing. And they served together. In the department «K» of the Economic Service (SEB) of the FSB.
The smiling guy on the left is a graduate of the FSB Academy in 2003, Senior Lieutenant Kirill Cherkalin. His no less optimistic comrade on the right is a graduate of the FSB Academy in 2004, Lieutenant Andrey Vasiliev. The burly man next to him is a 1996 graduate of the FSB Academy, Major Dmitry Frolov.
We do not name the fourth FSB officer who got into the frame: the law prohibits disclosing names and surnames, much less publishing photographs of current and retired Chekists.
This does not apply to Cherkalin, Frolov and Vasiliev, their service certificates have already been confiscated, they have been dismissed and excluded from the lists of FSB personnel.
Dmitry Frolov, who rose to the rank of colonel and the position of deputy head of the K ”, was dismissed from the service on July 16, 2013 with the wording “due to loss of confidence”.
Andrey Vasiliev was excluded from the list of FSB officers on March 19, 2014, with the same wording. At the time of his dismissal, Vasilyev, by that time a major, held the position of head of the first direction of the Second Department of Directorate «K».
Kirill Cherkalin in May 2011 headed the Second Department of the «K» Department, which deals with the fight against corruption in the country's banking sector. On June 21, 2014, for impeccable service and exemplary performance of official duties, he was ahead of schedule awarded the rank of «lieutenant colonel». He did not have time to become a colonel, although the idea of conferring this title was already being prepared. But on May 6, 2019, the director of the FSB signed an order to dismiss Cherkalin from service: “in connection with the deprivation of access to state secrets.”
Lt. Col. Cherkalin was acquainted with the order to dismiss him from the FSB in the Lefortovo prison cell. He was detained two weeks earlier, on April 23,
on the same day, searches were carried out in the office of the officer and in the apartments of his relatives. Soon footage of operational filming during the searches was leaked to the Internet. The country saw deposits of money in the rooms. In huge bags stuffed with rubles, dollars and euros in brand new bank packages, 911 kilograms of money were found. In terms of Russian rubles — twelve billion, an amount comparable to the annual budget of the city of Khimki near Moscow.
On April 25, 2019, Frolov and Vasilyev were taken into custody.
The central accusation brought against all three was that back in 2011, “acting jointly and in concert, unlawfully and free of charge”, they misled businessman Sergei Glyadelkin and his cousin Igor Tkach, at that time a senior official of the Moscow City Hall, head of the department for ensuring the implementation of investment projects, control (supervision) in the field of shared construction. On December 8, 2011, documents were signed, according to which, according to the investigation, the officers of the “K” department of the FSB “received a legally fixed opportunity to take possession and dispose of all the property of Ecostok LLC as their own.” And thus caused Glyadelkin and Tkach «property damage on an especially large scale» — each 318,949,686 rubles 85 kopecks.
The crime imputed to retired FSB officers looked incredibly daring. In 2011, Glyadelkin was in the status of a key witness in a criminal case against Moscow Vice Mayor Alexander Ryabinin. Earlier, Glyadelkin turned to the FSB with a statement that the vice-mayor was extorting non-residential premises in the center of Moscow and two million dollars from him. The businessman said he feared for his life. He was taken under state protection, which was carried out by employees of the FSB's own security department. Until mid-summer 2012, when the verdict against Ryabinin was announced, Glyadelkin was under round-the-clock guard of the officers of the CSS of the FSB.
However, according to the plot of the accusation, the officers of the “K” department somehow managed to bypass their colleagues from the CSS of the FSB and under their noses repeatedly meet with a businessman and his brother, a major Moscow official, and have assertive conversations, convincing them to make an extremely unprofitable deal.
Kirill Cherkalin in court. Photo: RIA Novosti
In addition to the episode with Glyadelkin and Tkach, Cherkalin and Frolov were charged with other crimes of corruption. In the case of retired FSB major Andrey Vasiliev, this criminal episode turned out to be the only one.
During the interrogation conducted on the day of his arrest, April 25, 2019, Vasiliev pleaded not guilty to the crime. He adhered to the same position during the confrontation with Sergei Glyadelkin. But thirteen months after his arrest, he suddenly changed his testimony. And on June 1, 2020, he signed the protocol of interrogation, in which he said that Frolov was his immediate supervisor and «… he simply could not refuse Frolov», «… believed that by taking part in the commission of the crime, he would enlist Frolov's support in the service», that he understood that he was “committing fraudulent acts” and that he “deeply regretted what he had done.” Vasiliev waited for the completion of the investigation no longer in a prison cell, but under house arrest. And on December 28, 2021, the Moscow Garrison Military Court gave the retired FSB major a luxurious gift: three days before the New Year, federal judge Konstantin Seleznev ruled to dismiss the criminal case against Vasilyev under part 4 of article 159 («Fraud»)» in connection with the expiration of the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution. In the same ruling, the court canceled the seizure of his property.
The judge read for about forty minutes a list of Vasiliev’s assets from which the arrest was lifted.
This is money — $ 6.7 million, 4, 1 million rubles and 32 thousand euros, and 17 expensive branded watches, and six parking spaces, and three apartments in Moscow, and eight houses in the Moscow region, and about nine dozen land plots in the Istra and Odintsovo districts of the Moscow region.
The announcement of the decision was delayed, because the judge, albeit in a patter, but read out the cadastral numbers of each of the land plots.
After the end of this court session, I approached Andrey Vasiliev, got acquainted and offered to “talk to the recorder”. But, alas, the retired FSB major did not accept the offer.
Andrey Vasiliev. Photo: Petr Kassin/Kommersant
All the more, I was not able to talk to his accomplices, because they are isolated in Lefortovo. On April 21, 2021, the Moscow Garrison Military Court sentenced Kirill Cherkalin to seven years in prison. He was stripped of the rank of «lieutenant colonel» and the state award — the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, II degree. There was not a word about the origin of the «Cherkalin billions» in the verdict. The trial of Colonel Dmitry Frolov is still ongoing in the same Moscow Garrison Military Court. The retired FSB colonel pleads not guilty and insists that the criminal case against him was fabricated.
The Golunov case
A month and a half after the arrest of Cherkalin, Frolov and Vasiliev, on June 6, 2019, journalist Ivan Golunov was detained in the center of Moscow, who was planted with drugs. Thanks to the huge public outcry, all charges against the journalist were dropped within five days. In May 2021, five former police officers involved in the arrest of Golunov and the fabrication of charges against him were sentenced to imprisonment for terms ranging from 5 to 12 years for abuse of power, falsification of evidence of operational-search activities and drug trafficking (Article 286 , 303, 228 of the Criminal Code of Russia). The investigation and the court did not investigate who and why really wanted to isolate Golunov and deprive him of the opportunity to engage in investigative journalism. The convicts also preferred to go to the colonies, but not to name the customers of the provocation.
Ivan Golunov himself suggested that they tried to imprison him for investigating a possible connection between the head of the FSB department for Moscow and the Moscow region, Colonel General Alexei Dorofeev and his assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Marat Medoev, with the funeral business in Moscow.
Ivan Golunov. Photos from social networks
On June 19, 2019, several publications, including Novaya, published publications simultaneously, the starting point of which was Ivan Golunov’s investigation about the Moscow funeral business. This text, in particular, mentioned a cottage settlement on the banks of the Istra reservoir, where Medoev and Dorofeev built their houses. “This village was built by a company associated with a former FSB officer who was arrested along with Colonel Kirill Cherkalin,” the publication said. — The village is managed by the same-named management company «Forest Bay», which belongs to Valery Vasiliev. It was from Vasiliev that Aleksey Dorofeev bought his land. And Vasiliev's son, ex-FSB officer Andrey Vasiliev, became well known after his high-profile detention, along with the head of the Second Department of the FSB Directorate «K» Kirill Cherkalin and his deputy Dmitry Frolov.
Today I have reason to speculate that
the provocation against Ivan Golunov with the planting of drugs and the arrest was not organized at all because of an investigation into the funeral business. And because of this real estate and the «Cherkalin billions» associated with it.
And here are the facts on which my version is based.
Ivan Golunov reached the finish line of his investigation in April-May 2019. Namely, at the end of April, Cherkalin, Frolov and Vasiliev were arrested and cubic meters of money were found in apartments associated with Cherkalin. SingleImage_image__3qIDn» alt=»» />
Dmitry Frolov. Photo: Petr Kassin/Kommersant
In May, Golunov sent journalistic inquiries to the owners of mansions in the village of Lesnaya Bukhta. The patrons of Andrei Vasilyev may have been alarmed by these requests: the village, as we remember, was ruled by the father of a retired FSB major, he was also the owner of land, and not only in Lesnaya Bukhta. Ivan Golunov did not know this yet. But the real owners of the mansions in the village on the banks of the Istra Reservoir hardly wanted him to get to the bottom of the information that, in addition to the land in Lesnaya Bukhta, 56 (fifty-six) land plots were issued to Vasiliev Sr. in the same village of Sysoevo Istrinsky district of Moscow region. The «Cherkalin case» was under the control of the President of Russia due to the huge resonance. And the important investigators conducting the investigation could well link the “Cherkalin billions” with Vasilyevsky land, having felt the version that one final beneficiary is guessed here.
And this is one of the inhabitants of the “Forest Bay”, alarmed by the Golunov investigation.