Especially if the dispute is about money
Despite the Arbitration ruling, the police immediately initiated a money dispute in order to investigate an unthinkable “crime”, determining the place where the crime was committed — Arbitration Moscow City Court!
Probably even a first-year law student knows what prejudice is. This concept is based on the binding nature of judicial acts for everyone and excludes the presence of judicial decisions that contradict each other. At the same time, praejudicialis does not apply to the entire decision as a whole, but specifically to the facts established in it. Imagine, dear judges, appointed, by the way, by the president himself, making a decision. And then it is “cancelled” when the same case is considered, for example, by the police. Absurd? «Absurd!» — a first-year student will tell you. But the investigator from the Southern Administrative District will answer: “A working scheme,” because it “works” without fail. At the same time, the know-how of the southerners is that it is not at all necessary to bring a criminal case to court, because then, after several months, it can be terminated, closed, and ultimately hushed up or lost. The main thing is to first excite the case, so that there is a sword of Doctrine, so that suspects and accused can be appointed, and so that there is something to talk about. Let's look at the example of one such case, which has been “sewn” for the third month in the Department of Internal Affairs in the Southern Administrative District of the capital, despite the obviousness of the dispute between business entities, which has already ended in a judicial act that has entered into legal force.
The company Rotor House Trade LLC, for simplicity we will call it RHT, has been closely cooperating with Logistic Trade LLC for five years, let’s call it LT. RHT purchased imported alcohol products from LT, which they then supplied to one customer. Payment was made in advance, and this system suited everyone. But any contract ends sooner or later. The RHT customer reported that he no longer needed their product; it is logical that the company, which actually worked for one buyer in this direction, automatically initiated the termination of the contract with its supplier — LT.
Since companies have been working with advances for a long time, LR, according to accounting data, has an overpayment from RHT, which was previously transferred for alcohol in advance. And the amount was not small — a little more than 105 million rubles! To this effect, the parties sign the relevant documents (acts of reconciliation of mutual settlements), and the data is reflected in the balance sheet and the explanatory note to it, and the auditor’s report confirms the accuracy of this information.
It would seem that everything is clear. LT received more funds than it supplied and shipped the goods, which means it should simply return other people’s money. What problems? Imagine it in a simplified way: you go into a store and give the seller a thousand rubles. You collect 875 rubles worth of potatoes, meat and onions, go to the checkout… Should you get your change back? With your own money? According to Cashier-LT, they shouldn’t.
The only legal option, if the money is not returned and it is not possible to reach an agreement peacefully, is to go to court, which is what the management of RHT did in October 2022. The case only in the first instance was heard for 8 months. The arbitration courts of the first and appellate instances gave a legal assessment of both all the documents presented by the parties and the Defendant’s arguments. As a result, both of them recognized the debt in the amount of 105 million rubles as justified. Moreover, they calculated the interest, because while the “change” is with LT, it is quite possible to put it into circulation in one’s own interests.
The defendant, LT, insisted that LT had already spent money on servicing previous orders — delivery, customs clearance, storage in a warehouse, filing a counterclaim in court in the amount of 9 million rubles (note, not for 105 million rubles, but only 9 million rubles). But the court refused to satisfy LT’s counterclaim for the recovery of additional costs from RHT. At the same time, the amount of the debt was not disputed; neither the acts of reconciliation of mutual settlements nor the primary documentation were disputed. It is noteworthy that various accounting documents, acts of reconciliation of calculations of RHT and LT were signed regularly and repeatedly throughout the years and this was a common practice.
And from this moment the fun begins! The next day after the court issued a writ of execution for debt collection, the investigation of the Department of Internal Affairs for the Southern District of Moscow on September 27, 2023 institutes a criminal case under the article “Fraud” against an unidentified person! The police quickly identified the scammers: And not in relation to LT, which clearly does not want to return the money, but in relation to representatives of RHT!
The supplier — LT appeared as a victim in this criminal case, provided exactly the same documents and arguments in the criminal case materials that he stated in the arbitration dispute, painting and interpreting it in a different light. But the investigation ignores the fact that the Arbitration Court has already clarified and established the facts. Moreover, on the day the writ of execution was submitted to the Bank, according to which RHT could return its hard-earned money, the investigative authorities received a ruling from the Nagatinsky District Court of Moscow prohibiting the execution of this writ of execution, as well as a ban on initiating bankruptcy proceedings against the Supplier. The Nagatinsky judicial act is being appealed, but together with other glaring facts and strange coincidences, it makes it clear what exactly the purpose of the criminal prosecution launched is not to pay, to recoup the debt, and to force RHT to give up these 105 million.
So, once again: a debt in the amount of 105 million rubles arose due to the fact that more was transferred in advance than the LT company actually delivered goods, as well as taking into account the offsets that were made between the companies, bonus agreements and other primary documentation that was the subject of research by arbitration courts of various instances.
At the same time, the Arbitration Court verified the calculation presented by the plaintiff and made a detailed calculation of LT’s debt to RHT in the amount of 105,797,101.35 rubles under Supply Agreement No. 4 dated December 21, 2016. Satisfying the requirements stated by RHT, the court of first instance fully examined the numerous Reconciliation Acts submitted by both RHT and LT in the case materials, signed between the parties for the period 2017-2021, payment orders and invoices for the period from 2016 to 2021, agreements on offsets, bonuses .
In addition, the courts took into account that in the case materials there is another Reconciliation Act dated March 15, 2022, signed by both parties, which confirms the above amount of debt. The said act was signed at the request of LT auditors, who sent the request to RHT.
This should have been the end of it all, but the investigative authorities of the Internal Affairs Directorate for the Southern Administrative District for some reason thought differently. Despite the principle of prejudice and non-interference of the security forces in disputes between economic entities, they decided to intervene and resolve everything themselves and in their own way. The court is not a decree for them! How is this possible? Does our valiant police of the Southern Administrative District really believe that the Moscow Arbitration Court can be the site of a crime, and the professionalism of the judges is not a match for our security forces, and the execution of a legally binding act is theft? Such rumors can lead to many problems.
Let's start with the fact that the criminal case was initiated in the Southern Administrative District. Not where the legal addresses of the companies or their management are located, but where the Moscow Arbitration Court is located! Although this is not the first time that the issue of territorial jurisdiction of the Internal Affairs Directorate in the Southern Administrative District has been replaced by its own. How else can we explain that in his own resolution, the investigator, vividly describing the implementation of the criminal intent in the summer of 2021 (i.e., long before the trial), also indicates the place of this action, located in the Eastern Administrative District of the capital. Then aren’t the judges themselves who made decisions about the debt themselves suspects in the case? It was they who, in two instances, studied in detail all financial documents for a year and did not find any signs of such a serious crime in them! According to the logic of investigators from the Southern Administrative District, now any and every plaintiff who goes to court to collect his own money from the debtor can easily become a defendant in a criminal case as a person intending not to collect, but to steal money from the debtor. At the same time, the “victim” LT all the time while the civil case was being considered in arbitration since October 2022, i.e. for almost a year, he did not think that they were trying to rob him, and after he lost the case, he suddenly saw the light and hastily ran to the police of the Southern Administrative District, where they were just waiting to instantly launch an investigation.
It is also interesting how quickly the investigation works in such a case. 09/27/2023 by the investigator of the 4th department of the Investigative Committee for the ROPD of the Internal Affairs Directorate for the Southern Administrative District of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the city of Moscow, Major of Justice A.M. Koltsov. A criminal case was initiated on the basis of an attempted crime under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, in relation to an unidentified person (note, in the singular). I would especially like to note that we are talking about an assassination attempt, because… Thanks to the speed and ability of the security forces of the Southern Administrative District to act in such situations, it was possible to prevent the execution of the court decision on the writ of execution. So it turns out that if the money was collected from the debtor, then what interest would it be for the police to bother with this matter? And so the money is there.
On October 23, 2023, searches were conducted at the general director of RHT, as well as at RHT, at one of the RHT participants. And just a day later, the investigator makes a decision to implicate RHT CEO Ekaterina Teslikova and RHT participant Alexander Atayev as defendants. That is, it took the Arbitration Office almost a year to study and resolve the case, while the investigative geniuses took less than a month! Neither Teslikova, nor Atayev, nor other employees of RHT were called to give explanations; no documents regarding the legal relationship with LT were requested or demanded. Thus, the preliminary investigation authorities were actually based only on the LT’s unfounded statement about the crime and on the documents presented by the victims, which, apparently, had not even been studied yet.
Another interesting point is the action described in the decisions by the investigator, which should be considered criminal. It turns out that the victim LT, represented by its managers, was “persuaded… to sign a reconciliation act for mutual settlements dated December 31, 2021.” But excuse me, what do you mean convinced to sign? How were you convinced? Who was convinced? Who convinced? We find the answer to all these questions in the decision to bring the accused. It turns out that the act of reconciliation of mutual settlements was signed by the general director of Logistic Trade Natalya Chekanova. The only participant in Logistic Trade LLC is Pavel Dunaevsky, who was allegedly “convinced” by someone of the existence of a 105 million debt. But this begs a reasonable question: who, in fact, then “convinced” signatory Natalya Chekanova to sign the reconciliation act, more than once, both in December 2021 and March 2022? According to the investigation, it turns out that someone convinced Dunaevsky, and Dunaevsky already convinced Chekanova! But is it really so easy to “convince” the owner and manager of a business with multibillion-dollar income of a non-existent debt? Or maybe the multi-billion-dollar turnover of supplies of alcoholic beverages or their vapors has clouded common memory and a sober mind?
Yes, and what does it mean — convinced? Data from your own primary accounting “Logistic Trade”! Such zeal of the police contradicts the ruling of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. It says that refuting the prejudice of a judicial act adopted in civil proceedings, on the basis of the mere disagreement of the investigator conducting the criminal proceedings with the conclusions of this judicial act, would make it possible to overcome the legal force of the court decision in violation of the constitutional principle of the presumption of innocence and related With this peculiarity of proof in criminal proceedings, ignore reasonable doubts about a person’s guilt arising from prejudice.
The refusal of the inquirer, investigator or prosecutor carrying out criminal proceedings to recognize the effect of prejudice as a property of the legal force of a court decision adopted in civil proceedings would also mean the overriding of judicial decisions that have entered into legal force by administrative bodies, which does not correspond to the very nature of justice that is carried out only by the court, and the constitutional principles of the independence of the judiciary and the independence of the court.
Perhaps in the proceedings of the investigative department of the Internal Affairs Directorate in the Southern Administrative District there are so few cases that really require investigation that there is time for intervention in obvious economic disputes? And then there’s a mistake. The department has a lot of criminal cases, so the investigators are provided with work for many years to come.
Then why did the bathhouse catch fire? Contrary to all the rules of the law, contrary to common sense? I would not like to once again rely on the honor of the uniform. Perhaps they themselves were misled by a false denunciation, and in their reference book on legal terms with the letter “P” (prejudice) someone simply tore out a page? We know how to handle this moment. And we are even ready to give them a new one, if only justice and legality are restored in this case and other similar cases that investigators of the Southern District are dealing with.