The Luzhkov Factor in the FSB Colonel Case
The Moscow Garrison Military Court continues to hear the criminal case, the materials of which were submitted to the court back in July 2021. This case received loud public attention soon after the arrest of FSB Lieutenant Colonel Kirill Cherkalin, head of the banking department of the K. Directorate. Cherkalin was arrested on April 25, 2019. Stockpiles of dollars, euros, and rubles, amounting to approximately 12 billion in ruble equivalent, whose origin remains unknown, were discovered in apartments associated with Cherkalin. At the same time, in the spring of 2019, two more individuals who once served in the FSB appeared in the criminal case. Former Deputy Head of the K. Directorate, FSB Colonel Dmitry Faralov, who was discharged from service on July 16, 2013. And former operative of the same directorate, Major Andrei Vasilyev, who was sent to reserve on March 19, 2014.
Prolov and Vasiliev were arrested at the end of April 2019, almost simultaneously with Cherkalin, but on a different criminal case. A month and a half after the arrest, in June 2019, the criminal cases of all three FSB officers were combined into one proceeding, and they were accused of fraud committed back in 2011. According to the prosecution, at the end of 2011, Cherkalin, Frolov, and Vasiliev completed the crime by convincing businessman Sergey Glyadelkin and his cousin, Moscow city hall official Igor Tkachev, to sell 49% of the company YurPromConsulting for a pittance, which the investigation valued at 638 million rubles. What happened? After 7.5 years, in 2019, Glyadelkin and Tkachev suddenly realized that in 2011, they had become victims of FSB fraudsters, but in November 2023, the fraud charges seemingly fell apart because the very event of the crime was absent.
This directly follows from the results of the forensic examination conducted at the Russian Federal Center for Forensic Expertise under the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. The examination was appointed by the court. The court selected the expert institution to conduct the research and tasked it with calculating the market value of 49% of the shares of the firm YurPromConsulting as of December 2011. An important point: a precedent has been set. Neither Gledelkin nor Tkach officially owned shares in the company YurPromConsulting and did not incur any officially confirmed expenses. The indictment mentioned the figure of 638 million rubles. This was the amount that private experts hired by the investigation estimated the value of 49% of the company to be. Notably, the head of the expert division had previously worked as one of the leaders of the expert division of the main investigative department of the Investigative Committee of Russia. The employees who conducted the assessment, as it turned out, had been stripped of their candidate degrees for plagiarism. In contrast, much more professional specialists working at the Federal Center for Forensic Expertise "Primenusti" assessed not only the company's assets but also its debt burden.
And they came to the conclusion that the value of YurPromConsulting was negative. In December of last year, the victim filed a motion. A motion for a repeated, already third, expert examination. On December 21, Sergey Glyadelkin even personally came to the court. The consideration of the motion dragged on, and a decision on it was made only on January 16. The court decided to deny the motion. At the same time, it was emphasized in the court ruling that the experts had provided exhaustive answers to all the questions posed by the court. And that the court had no more questions about how much YurPromConsulting was actually worth. In December 2011. And that this value was negative. But two days later, on January 18, the court issued a decision to conduct an additional examination. In the same expert institution under the Ministry of Justice of Russia. For a rather vague reason. I repeat, the trial in the Moscow Garrison Military Court has been going on for three years now. Many have already forgotten why the FSB officers Frolov, Cherkaln, and Vasiliev were arrested in the first place.
And what were they accused of? I talked about this back in June 2011. You can watch that episode of the program by following the link under this video. There, you can also like it and subscribe to the channel. Let me briefly remind you. In 2001, the Moscow city government decided on a comprehensive reconstruction of the first and second microdistricts of the Left Bank area of the capital. The implementation of the program was planned from 2001 to 2010. This program attracted the interest of the Inteko company, headed by Elena Baturina, the wife of the then mayor of the capital. But Inteko could not participate in profitable co-investment projects with the Moscow government. That would have seemed too brazen. Therefore, companies registered under Inteko employees and business partners participated in these projects. For these structures, the city set very insignificant investment contributions. However, for investors not associated with Inteko, the investment contributions were significantly higher. This covered the budget financing deficit of the city's construction complex.
Which was led by Vladimir Resin at that time. However, firms affiliated with Inteko often latched onto external investors. The structure of which the city attracted as general contractors. But, importantly, companies from the Inteko orbit did not like to invest their own money in projects. Nor did they like to take loans on Inteko's balance sheet. Because of the abundance of projects, both Inteko itself and the firms from the orbit of the construction giant, the wife of the then mayor of Moscow, were heavily indebted. They preferred to offer banks a partnership under such a scheme. We create a legal entity in which half of the shares will be yours, and the other half will be with firms or individuals close to Elena Baturina. You allocate money in the form of a loan. We take on solving all problems with the city administration regarding project timelines and the commissioning of the constructed property. After the project is completed, all debts with interest are paid off, and all costs are reimbursed, we share the profit.
Companies associated with Baturina, which owned half of the shares in the companies that implemented the projects, essentially did nothing financially burdensome but received half of the profits. It looked something like "we give you a little something, you give us a million." But the participants in the construction market had no choice. Either agree to the onerous terms or stand on the sidelines. It was according to this scheme that in December 2005, Eurofinance Mosnarbank and a company affiliated with the bank, Yurpromconsulting, joined the project for the reconstruction of two districts of Levoberezhye. The bank decided to issue a loan to this company for co-financing the construction of 23 buildings of the new district in collaboration with the Moscow government. It was then, in December 2005, that Sergey Glyadelkin and Igor Tkach, representing the interests of Elena Baturina, appeared in this story. At that time, Tkach was the general director of the company Inteko-Center, and Glyadelkin headed a firm affiliated with Inteko. Elena Baturina herself was the chairman of the board of Inteko-Center.
And on the board of directors, in addition to Tkach, two other leading deputies of Baturina at the main "Inteko" also worked. The contractors for the Moscow government on this project were structures friendly to "Inteko," such as "Mosfundamentstroy-6," and construction firms from the orbit of "Inteko." These were "Trust MSM-1" and one of the structural divisions of this firm, which was headed by Sergey Glyadelkin, who later became its owner. "Trust MSM-1" was given a trial run to build one building, which it constructed with a delay on the peninsula. This took half a year, and the construction of the second was halted at the 30% readiness stage. The city decided to terminate the contract due to the low quality of construction and the failure to meet deadlines. An important detail: according to the contract between the city and the firm "Yurpromconsulting," the funds invested in the project were returned to the city in the form of apartments. But not immediately, but after the prepayment of the investment contribution and the compensation of all costs for the construction of the houses. The city was responsible for the demolition of the construction.
For the construction of each building in the Levoberezhye development project, the city, within the framework of municipal orders, concluded separate contracts with the customer and the general contractors of the construction. But in 2008, significant changes in budgetary and land legislation occurred, forcing the Moscow city hall to begin reorganizing the department that was managing the Left Bank development project. The construction was halted and stopped by the decision of the Moscow government. And, in fact, it is not "Yurpromconsulting" that has refused the services of the construction firms "Inteka" or "Glyadelkina" with quality. The Moscow government no longer wanted to work with these companies. At the time the project was halted, YPK had already transferred half of the investment contribution—27 million dollars—and the funds for the construction of five out of the 23 planned buildings. These were borrowed funds. By that time, Yurpromconsulting owed Eurofinance Mosnarbank about 2 billion rubles. Yurpromconsulting and the bank decided to sue the city to at least recover the money overpaid to the city as an investment contribution for the unbuilt buildings.
A few years before these events, in 2006, top manager of Inteka, Alexander Ryabinin, was appointed as an advisor to the Mayor of Moscow, and in June 2007, he became the Deputy Mayor of Moscow for investment and contract oversight. He was tasked with bringing the entire investment process in the construction sector into order. To accomplish this, the Moscow City Control Committee was created. Since 2008, Igor Tkach began working as the Deputy Head of this committee. A year and a half later, Inteka lobbied for Igor Tkach to be appointed as the head of Mosnadzor for shared construction, which began overseeing disputes with investors over all frozen projects and construction sites. An interesting point: Tkach came to Moscow from Ukraine, where he served in the Ukrainian police, rising to the rank of captain. However, when the captain of the Ukrainian police Tkach arrived in Moscow, he began working in construction security. Soon, he made a rapid career in the structures of Inteka.
During the investigation of the criminal case against Frolov, Cherkalin, and Vasilyev, it was revealed that Tkach and Gledelkin considered themselves secret shareholders of Yurpromconsulting through their participation in the company "Ecostok," which owned 49% of the shares of Yurpromconsulting. They clearly did not want to sue the Moscow government. Therefore, it seems, they instructed their partner, who officially owned the company according to the registry, to withdraw from the company's participants. This effectively distanced them from the obligations related to the enormous debts of Yurpromconsulting from bank loans. This was done almost simultaneously, within a week, with the sale of the company "Inteka" by Batorina. It is suspected that Gledelkin and Tkach were well aware back in 2011 that the value of YPK was negative, meaning the market value of the company's assets was much lower than its debts. This will be established by a forensic examination conducted by the Federal Center for Forensic Expertise under the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation in the fall of 2023.
But in the spring of 2019, this did not prevent Gledelkin and Tkach from making accusations against FSB officers. Allegedly, in January-February 2011, they met in restaurants, allegedly falling victim to the charisma of the Chekists, suffering due to their trusting relationships with them. They listened to the Chekists' advice to withdraw from the founders of the YPK company, which they did at the end of 2011. However, there is no information in the criminal case materials against Frolov, Cherkalin, and Vasiliev indicating that there were any other meetings with the Chekists and discussions about YPK shares between the meetings in early 2011 and the signing of documents at the end of 2011. I have strong suspicions that Gledelkin and Tkach, or possibly not them but their more influential patrons, needed this criminal case solely to create a basis for initiating lawsuits in civil and arbitration courts and to attempt to seize the money discovered during searches in apartments linked to Cherkalin.
In June 2019, FSB Lieutenant Colonel Kirill Cherkalin confessed to his guilt, entered into a plea bargain, and two years after his arrest, on April 22, 2021, the Moscow Garrison Court sentenced him to 7 years in a penal colony. The sentence was issued in a special manner, without examining the evidence. Thanks to his confession to a crime he did not commit, Cherkalin avoided the need to explain the origins of the large sums of money found in apartments linked to him. This arrangement suited the investigation, the prosecution, and the court perfectly. One cannot help but wonder who the puppet master of this murky story is, who had the opportunity to meet with Cherkalin in his prison cell and convince him to confess to fraud against Gledelkin and Tkachu. Meanwhile, shortly after Cherkalin's arrest, publications began to appear with investigations suggesting where Cherkalin might have gotten billions.
For example, in my investigation "Brigade K," I talked about the operations of the Deposit Insurance Agency for the rehabilitation of banks, about tenders outside the DIA for rehabilitation, about credit limits for special banks from the Bank of Russia, and much more. Cherkalin's confession to fraud against Gledelkin and Tkache was safe and painless for the FSB colonel, as he suspected the guilty party. He turned out to be guilty of a much more serious crime, which is called "taking more than his rank allowed." By the way, Kirill Cherkalin's close interaction with the DIA began only after Dmitry Frolov was dismissed from the FSB. At that time, the DIA turned into an organization with enormous corruption opportunities for unscrupulous dealers both in uniform and out of uniform. Former FSB major Andrey Vasilyev, who also served in the KFSB and was arrested on the same day as Dmitry Frolov on April 25, 2019, initially did not admit his guilt.
But after spending 13 months in pre-trial detention, he changed his testimony. On June 1, 2020, Vasilyev signed an interrogation protocol in which he stated that he admitted his guilt in committing the crime. Vasilyev was immediately released from the prison cell and placed under house arrest at his dacha in Nikolina Gora. One could say that Vasilyev and his family got very lucky. Immediately after he admitted his guilt, the courts lifted the arrest on most of the family's numerous assets, for example, on real estate located in elite settlements where FSB generals live. In addition, Vasilyev was promised the return of millions of dollars seized from bank safes. Legal battles over the return of these millions are ongoing and quite successful. During the trial, Vasilyev retracted his testimony given in the prison cell. On December 28, 2021, the Moscow Garrison Military Court issued a ruling to terminate the criminal case against Vasilyev under part 4 of article 159 of fraud due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution.
And only the retired FSB Colonel Dmitry Frolov continues to persist, not admitting his guilt. He continues to insist that Gledyokin and Tkach made up the story, that Frolov, together with his subordinates Cherkalin and Vasiliev, in 2011 persistently advised the businessman-official to cede 49% of the shares of the company "Yurpromconsulting." And I have serious grounds to believe that specifically in this story, the retired FSB Colonel Dmitry Frolov is not lying. But Gledyokin and Tkach framed the FSB officer, inventing a crime that not only did not happen, but which, in my firm evaluative judgment, could not have happened at all. And here’s why. The fact is that in 2011, Gledyokin was in the status of a victim and key witness in a criminal case against the Deputy Mayor of Moscow Alexander Ryabinin. In 2009, Gledyokin approached the FSB with a statement that the Deputy Mayor was extorting a bribe from him in the form of a non-residential property in downtown Moscow and 2 million dollars.
A criminal case was initiated against Ryabinin. In July 2012, he was sentenced to 3 years of probation for fraud. During the judicial proceedings of his criminal case, it became clear that Ryabinin could not have influenced the signing of the documents necessary for Glyadelkin, as the project had been terminated back in 2008-2009 based on the collegial decisions of the Moscow government. During the investigation, Glyadelkin stated that he feared for his life. He was placed under state protection, which was carried out by the all-powerful 6th Department of the Federal Security Service's own security service at that time. Until mid-summer 2012, Glyadelkin was under round-the-clock protection by the officers of the own security service. The state protection of the important witness was supervised by Major General Oleg Feoktistov. However, according to the prosecution's narrative, Frolov Cherkalin and Vasiliev somehow managed to repeatedly meet with the businessman and his brother, who oversaw this project from the Moscow government, right in front of the "sixth" employees and convince him to make a deal to sell a stake in the company "Yurpromconsulting."
There were rumors about the ambitious General Feoktistov in those years that he would soon head the KFSB department. In the long term, it was not ruled out that he would be considered as a successor to the FSB director. Major General Oleg Feoktistov had quite strained relations with the then head of the KFSB department, Lieutenant General Viktor Voronin. And if he had received operational information that Voronin's subordinates were pressuring an important witness to coerce them into an unfavorable deal, it is suspected that Feoktistov would have made a significant effort to ensure that Frolov, Cherkalin, and Vasiliev ended up in Lefortovo as early as 2011. It is important to note that the company that owned 49% of "Yurpromconsulting" was abandoned by its owners immediately after the sale of this stake in 2011 and did not submit any reports. In 2018, the Federal Tax Service excluded it from the register of legal entities, and in 2012, tax officials were even unable to initiate bankruptcy proceedings there due to non-payment of taxes, as there were no funds to hire an arbitration manager.
This indicates that Gledelkin and Tkach were not interested in this topic for many years. Interestingly, while the investigation was ongoing, the criminal case was presented in such a way that Gledelkin befriended Vasiliev in relation to Ryabinin. In 2012-2013, Gledelkin and his wife were invited to celebrate Vasiliev's son's birthday. Moreover, during the searches at Vasiliev's place, Gledelkin's promissory notes were found, indicating that in 2017-2018 he borrowed money from a retired FSB major, and we are talking about very serious amounts in millions of dollars. Throughout all the years of a strong male friendship with Vasiliev, Gledelkin never once made any claims to him regarding the sale of a 49% stake in the company "Yurpromconsulting." Another important point that everyone has now forgotten about: on September 28, 2010, the President of Russia, at that time Dmitry Medvedev, signed a decree on the early termination of the powers of the Mayor of Moscow, under which Yuri Luzhkov was relieved of his duties as Mayor of Moscow due to the loss of the trust of the President of the Russian Federation.
Moscow was headed by Sergey Sobyanin, who was delegated to the capital's mayoral position from the role of Deputy Prime Minister and Head of the Government Apparatus of Russia. Sobyanin came to the Moscow mayor's office with his team, which began its work by reviewing all of Luzhkov's projects. It is not surprising that particular attention was paid to projects involving companies connected with Elena Baturina. On February 15, 2011, the Sobyanin government of Moscow published a list of several thousand investment projects that raised questions. In this list, the Left Bank development project was classified as problematic due to the impossibility of continuing the project because of serious issues related to changes in land and budget legislation. To avoid getting bogged down in legal disputes for years, Sobyanin's team lobbied for the adoption of Federal Law 427-FZ, under which Moscow was granted the right to terminate any investment contracts concluded before January 1, 2011, without compensating losses, interest, or lost profits to the city's counterparties.
And this happened at the end of November 2011. This Federal Law effectively condemned Yurpromkonsalting to bankruptcy. By the way, Galidelykin and Tkach's partners formalized the deal to sell 49% of Yurpromkonsalting's stake on the day this law was approved by the Federation Council on November 29, 2011. Another important point. After Yuri Luzhkov was relieved of his duties as mayor of Moscow, efforts to uncover corruption manifestations intensified, both in the work of the former mayor himself and his subordinates. More than a year passed after Luzhkov's resignation, and tensions continued to rise. On October 25, 2011, the head of the Russian presidential administration made a loud statement. At that time, Sergey Naryshkin, the current head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, held this position. Naryshkin explained the personnel decisions made more than a year ago. According to the official, the Russian president's decision to dismiss Luzhkov was based on two reasons.
This is, firstly, extremely ineffective city management, and secondly, an outrageous level of corruption allowed by Luzhkov and his entourage. I repeat, this statement was made on October 25, 2011, a month before Gledelkin and Tkach agreed to cede 49% of the share in the company Yurpromconsulting. Let's assume that it is true, that the Chekists received information back in 2011 that a high-ranking official of the Moscow city hall, Igor Tkach, is a secret shareholder of several commercial companies, including Yurpromconsulting. I have no doubt that Tkach would have ended up in a prison cell back in 2011, and his arrest would have been used as evidence of Yuri Luzhkov's corruption. It should be noted that in 2020, during interrogations in the case of FSB Colonel Dmitry Frolov, Igor Tkach listed all the political structures he was a part of while working at the city hall. However, he claimed that he had transferred all these assets to the trust management of Sergey Gledelkin.
But Tkach did not provide any documentary evidence to support these claims. Interestingly, in 2019, when the case was initiated, Tkach claimed that everything belonged to Gledelkin and that all the damage was inflicted on him. But in 2020, for some reason, he changed his testimony and stood shoulder to shoulder with Gledelkin, joining the ranks of the victims, claiming that from the very beginning he had been an accomplice in his brother's business. And this is equivalent to admitting that the main business contracts of Gledalkin's firm were with the Moscow government, and that Igor Tkach was the curator of these contracts. An important point. The official owner of nearly a third of the shares in the Gledikinskaya company Avenue Holding, Igor Tkach, became so after his dismissal from the city hall in 2019. Formally, he bought 27% of the company's shares for 50,625 euros. That's a fact. But it is also a fact that during the time Tkach worked in the mayor's office and, apparently, helped his brother's business, the capitalization of Avenue Holding with all its subsidiaries grew from 280,000 euros to almost 96,940,000 euros.
That is, almost 350 times. And the purchase of 27% of the company's shares for 50,625 euros, with a capitalization of almost 100 million euros, in my firm opinion, is nothing less than a bribe given by Sergey Glyadelkin and a bribe received by Igor Tkach. In one of the upcoming programs, we will tell you in more detail about the assets owned by Igor Tkach during his time in the mayor's office, not only in Russia. But now let's return to the court proceedings, which are ongoing in the Moscow Garrison Military Court. On December 21, 2023, Glyadelkin began his speech in court with these words: "I read the novel 'Shame' by Dostoevsky. It is about culture and prison." Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky wrote many novels, stories, and tales: "Crime and Punishment," "The Brothers Karamazov," "The Idiot," "The Gambler," "Demons," and many others. But Dostoevsky did not write a novel called 'Shame.' It turns out that Sergey Glyadelkin deceived the court. Not for the first time. We continue to follow the court proceedings in the Moscow Garrison Military Court.