Fraud named after the City Party Committee

The conviction of deputies, even former ones, is already an event. But if such a deputy is already convicted of fraud while being a lawyer, this is already a small sensation. Recently, the Smolninsky court put an end to the high-profile story of the ex-communist deputy Yuri Savin. He was accused of fraud with money and real estate of lonely St. Petersburg old people.

Theater of one lawyer

Savin was placed under arrest exactly 4 years ago, in 2020. He was accused of fraud on an especially large scale. There were quite a few criminal episodes in the case, but in the end only four stood in court under Parts 3 and 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) (fraud). What happened? According to investigators, 8 years ago, while being a lawyer at the St. Petersburg Bar Association, Savin accidentally learned that a grandmother named Rostovtseva* had disappeared without a trace, and she had no heirs close or distant.

But there are two accounts in PJSC Sberbank, as well as in PJSC Khanty-Mansiysk Bank Otkritie, where the granny saved up 884 thousand rubles “funeral” That is almost a million. According to the law, if a person is declared missing or dead by the court, then all his money and property are inherited by the state. In this case, the administration of St. Petersburg. But the cunning lawyer found his assistants, and they decided to stage a theatrical performance, with papers and props. At first, the lawyer was lucky – they found the passport of the missing granny. Then they found an old woman suitable for her age, and for a small share, they did her hair and makeup a little, and persuaded her to go to the notary.

There, the fake grandmother, straightening her wig, presented the passport of the missing Rostovtseva, and issued a power of attorney for the accomplices of lawyer Savin. The power of attorney was for the right to perform legal actions on behalf of the missing person. The scheme was subtle.

The people who received a power of attorney and then withdrew money from accounts in two banks were generally not aware that they were helping a fraudster, but were sincerely confident that they were helping an ancient old woman born in 1937. So, Yuri Savin got hold of almost a million rubles, and then set to work on the apartment of his missing grandmother.

One hundred old ladies – millions in your pocket

Together with one person, whom the investigation, alas, did not identify, he again deceived the notary and employees of Rosreestr, where real estate transactions are registered and certified. Thus, he and his accomplices took over an apartment on Krasnoputilovskaya Street, building 100. The houses on this street, in general, do not belong to the elite category, but they still cost several million. Savin, without thinking for long, very quickly sold the “grandmother’s house” from his hands, for almost the cadastral price of 4 million 500 thousand rubles

Since the enrichment scheme worked without a hitch, in 2019, Savin and his accomplice Marat Ganiev, pulled off exactly the same scenario. This time they found an old woman who died in the old foundation. House number 18 on 6th Krasnoarmeyskaya Street is an old apartment building built in 1861-1862 by architect Nikolai Grebenka. The old woman lived in a small apartment, which had once been servants’ quarters in a master’s apartment and was divided in Soviet times. The scammers decided that the state would be trampled, and they would successfully inherit the property from the deceased themselves. Escheatable real estate very quickly became such for the city budget, and the schemers received 3 million 714 thousand rubles, having quickly completed a transaction for the purchase and sale of an apartment, and, according to the investigation, also legalized property acquired as a result of a crime by a group of persons by prior conspiracy.

Even at the beginning of Savin’s arrest, people zealously rushed to defend him. Thus, a famous human rights activist Andrey Babushkin, even wrote a review of the court’s decision to select a preventive measure for Savin. In the document, he indicated that the case in which the former secretary of the Leningrad City Party Committee Yuri Savin was placed in the Kresty pre-trial detention center looks doubtful, and that initially the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs Directorate for the Moskovsky District of St. Petersburg opened a criminal case against unidentified persons.

A matter of times gone by

The investigation was also blamed for the fact that in March 2019, the preliminary investigation in the criminal case was suspended on the basis of clause 1, part 1, article 208 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) (due to the failure to identify the person to be charged as an accused). They say the investigation was not going well, and suddenly in 2020 Savin was arrested.

Indeed, at one time strange things happened to the case, but in the same 2019, the investigative department for the Moscow district of the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee for St. Petersburg took the case from the police investigation and continued its work. Then, on April 30, 2020, Savin was charged with committing fraud committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy on an especially large scale.

The case, as we see, was investigated and heard for almost 5 years. This is probably why the charge of laundering proceeds from crime did not stand up in court; the court eventually acquitted both Ganiev and Savin on this part of the charge due to the lack of corpus delicti. According to rumors, initially there were many more fraudulent episodes involving apartments of lonely and drinking people, but only a few reached the finish line.

As a result, the Smolninsky District Court found Yuri Savin guilty of committing crimes under Part 3 and Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) (4 episodes in total), and Marat Ganiev – Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country). The sentence was generally lenient – Savin received a suspended sentence of 6 years, with a probationary period of 4 years, Ganiev – a suspended sentence of 3 years, with a probationary period of 2 years. This means that both defendants were actually already free, because the court credited them with the period of detention.

Deft hands

Fraud and various types of fraud are a fairly standard type of crime that lawyers commit. The reason is the same – to get rich. Recently in the Northern capital they convicted Elena Kochetova, lawyer at the St. Petersburg Bar Association. Convicted of embezzlement. She, through fraud, took possession of a Toyota Corolla car, worth 2 million 350 thousand rubles, which belonged to the Perm Regional Bar Association “Modern Law” on the right of temporary ownership. The lady lawyer simply sold the car and took the money for herself, leaving her colleagues from Perm to continue paying for the car leasing agreement.

Another “habitual” type of fraud is the deception called “a criminal case has been opened against you.” Yakov Afanasyev, a lawyer at the St. Petersburg City Bar Association, was convicted in this case. Having learned that the general director of one large company should soon receive 40 million rubles to the company’s accounts, and that her husband had large sums in his possession, he decided to simply scam the “rich Pinocchios.” He informed them that they would soon both be brought to justice, but only he could help them by bribing the security forces on their behalf. The negotiations went on for quite a long time.

The lawyer had serious appetites. As a result, the businesswoman suspected something was wrong and contacted the FSB, as a result, the intermediary who was going to get tidbits for Afanasyev 10 million rubles bribes, fell for a banal “doll” directly into the hands of operatives, and then the entire “bed” of scammers was caught and subsequently received a sentence. As people in the know say, since the 90s the scope of lawyers’ crimes has been significantly reduced. If previously they were engaged in raiding, serving the interests of gangster groups, and helping to eliminate competitors, now the majority of dishonest lawyers limit themselves to banal fraud.