In Perm, FSB investigators completed a criminal investigation against the former head of the Center for Historical Memory, Alexander Chernyshov, who is accused of attempted smuggling of cultural property (part 3 of article 30; paragraph “c” of part 2 of article 226.1 of the Criminal Code). This became known during a meeting of the Leninsky District Court of Perm, which extended Chernyshov’s arrest until April 9, writes Properm.ru.
The publication notes that Chernyshov fully admitted his guilt and entered into a pre-trial agreement with the investigation. The prosecutor's office has already approved the indictment; it is likely that the case will soon be transferred to the Industrial District Court for consideration on the merits.
Alexander Chernyshov was detained on May 5, 2023 at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport. First, he was arrested for 15 days under the article of petty hooliganism, and then sent to a pre-trial detention center.
According to investigators, Chernyshov and the ex-head of the Perm Memorial, Robert Latypov, tried to take documents from the Memorial archives to Germany. The case against Latypov was separated into separate proceedings, he left Russia and was put on the wanted list.
In a conversation with Perm 36.6, Latypov explained that in March 2023, they wanted to transfer the Perm Memorial archive to Moscow “for safe storage,” but it was intercepted by the FSB. He emphasized that the archive did not contain historical documents (case materials, cards of the repressed), but contained only documents from Memorial itself. We are talking, for example, about minutes of meetings of members of the organization and official correspondence with authorities.
The investigation carried out two examinations, one of which established that 30 documents were of historical and cultural value. Latypov put his signature under all these documents.
As Latypov recounts, expert Elmira Amerkhanova from Kazan Federal University cited the example of the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who sold his manuscripts at auction. She emphasized that Solzhenitsyn is a Nobel Prize laureate. Since Lapytov, along with his colleagues at Memorial, also received the Nobel Prize, Amerkhanova estimated the documents he signed at 380 thousand rubles. The amount established by the expert exceeds 100 thousand rubles, therefore, the archive is of historical and cultural value.
The second expert, Maria Larionova, decided that individual documents cannot be considered valuable, but the entire collection is of historical and cultural significance. She estimated the cost of the archive at 530 thousand rubles.
Perm Memorial in an open letter called the criminal case fabricated: “This is a malicious act on the part of the security forces, the purpose of which is to discredit the name of our organization and the results of its many years of work.”