The Mistake of General Feoktistov
In the Moscow Military Garrison Court, the consideration of the criminal case against FSB Colonel Dmitry Frolov, the former deputy head of Directorate K, is coming to an end. The retired intelligence officer, who was dismissed from service on July 16, 2013, was arrested on April 26, 2019, and sent to the Lefortovo prison cell. Initially, retired Colonel Frolov and his former subordinate, retired FSB Major Andrei Vasiliev, apparently, were needed in the criminal case that was initiated after the arrest of FSB Lieutenant Colonel Kirill Cherkalin, the head of the banking department of Directorate K, in whose apartments 911 kilograms of money were found – dollars, euros, rubles, about 12 billion in ruble equivalent. By pulling Frolov and Vasiliev into Cherkalin's case, the prosecution? Apparently, hoped to divert public attention from the source of Cherkalin's billions. The calculation, it seems, paid off. The origin of the intelligence officer's billions, apparently, nobody even sought, and Cherkalin, having confessed to something he apparently did not commit, received a quite vegetarian punishment. Vasiliev has also long been free and left Russia. And only Frolov stubbornly does not admit his guilt.
The case was initiated five years ago. The court has been slowly reviewing the criminal case for almost three years. The case is frankly falling apart. A repeated forensic examination showed that the episode involving the FSB officers' fraud was fabricated because the victims suffered no damage. On January 16, 2024, there was a sense that Frolov would be acquitted in the episode involving the shares of the company "Yurpromkonsalting" because the court recognized the repeated examination as clear and uncontradictory. But an immediate reaction followed this court ruling. It seems that someone behind the scenes made a decision to break the logical and legal course of the judicial process and issue a guilty verdict. And already on January 18, another examination, which was called additional, was scheduled. All at the same Russian Federal Center for Forensic Examination of the Ministry of Justice, where, through some means, they managed to fabricate the damage with blatant manipulation. Violating all generally accepted rules for conducting examinations. Details about this so-called additional examination can be found at the link below this video.
You can also like and subscribe to the channel there. The court didn't even consider the challenge to expert Konstantin Salnikov. And he was clearly interested in reaching the desired result. Because during the years when the investigation into Frolov's case was ongoing, Salnikov worked at the Investigative Committee of Russia as the deputy head of the judicial process department, judicial and economic research, and the organization of expert-criminalistic activities department of the main forensic department of the Investigative Committee of Russia. He also concurrently headed his private family expert organization, which prepared the first examination that formed the basis of the indictment. Although, of course, it is illegal to do so. In 2020, Colonel of Justice Salnikov resigned from the Investigative Committee. And in the summer of 2023, he got a job at the Ministry of Justice's expert center as a regular expert. The additional examination in Frolov's case was almost his first independent examination at the new workplace. He only received the right to conduct independent examinations in December 2023.
Salnikov not only ignored all scientific methods of calculating market value and court decisions regarding the object of assessment, but he also did not bother to explain why he considers his calculation correct and the calculation of the deputy director of the Ministry of Justice center, which was carried out in 2020, incorrect. Salnikov did not explain why he disregarded court decisions, and a complete account of information about the object of assessment is a mandatory condition for such studies according to appraisal laws, federal appraisal standards, and the law on forensic expert activity. In general, it all looks like the military court took a salute and rolled the case towards a guilty verdict, despite the facts and objective reality. I note that the Cherkalin billions, which initiated the criminal prosecution of retired FSB Colonel Dmitry Frolov, are already being forgotten. An involuntary question arises: who is this mysterious gray cardinal of the criminal case against the FSB colonel?
Who did Frolov get in the way of? Who possesses such powerful administrative resources and long arms? Who has the ability to secretly manipulate the actions of the Moscow Military Garrison Court, the Prosecutor General's Office, the Investigative Committee, and the Russian Federal Center for Forensic Examination of the Ministry of Justice? Who was able to very timely introduce a trusted expert into the Ministry of Justice system, while maintaining their position as head of a private forensic expert organization, and assign the additional examination in Frolov's case to them? Who managed to convince the state expert of complete impunity, to so crudely fabricate an additional examination to support the charges, and to say that black is white? It is obvious to me that the customer of the criminal case against FSB Colonel Dmitry Frolov does not hold any leadership positions in the FSB, the administration of the President of Russia, or the Supreme Court of Russia today. Otherwise, the case would have been resolved a long time ago, and the court would not have appointed a repeated examination.
But I have a theory about who is pulling the strings in the trial at the Moscow Military Garrison Court. I have in my possession a document that reveals this secret. This is an official extract from the Hong Kong Companies Registry. Where Avenue Group Limited was registered in August 2016. It seems that the assets of the Austrian company Avenue Holding began to be transferred to this company. Which itself stopped submitting financial statements since 2020. And according to the Austrian company registry, it entered technical bankruptcy. And then into the liquidation process. As of today, it is the Hong Kong company that owns such firms as Swiss Avenue Financial Management Limited, Avenue Investments and Asset Management Limited, and Avenue Waste Management Limited. Hong Kong's Avenue Engineering and Construction Limited In turn, these companies are shareholders in many other legal entities. For example, Avenue Engineering and Construction Limited owns a large number of different companies and assets in Croatia and other countries.
It's a whole web of numerous companies. And for several years now, the process of restructuring the business has been underway. Russian assets are mostly being wound down. And all the best, like in an ark, is being accumulated at the Hong Kong holding company Avenue Group Limited. The founders of this foreign company in 2016 were three businessmen. Sergey Gledelkin, who indicated the capital of Croatia, the city of Zagreb, as his permanent place of residence Igor Kach, a former high-ranking official of the Moscow city hall, who has settled in the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia, and a Russian citizen, resident of Moscow Denis Morin Denis's father, Nikolai Morin, headed several subsidiaries of the Avenue group from 2018 to 2022. Denis himself worked in the structures of Avenue, and then suddenly became a real shareholder. No one had managed to dilute the Gledelkin and Tkach tandem before him, let alone for free. Moreover, this happened at a time when, according to the statements of Gledelkin and Tkach during the court hearings in the Moscow Military Garrison Court, it was already a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
It is possible that Denis Morin is simply a very talented businessman, and his marriage to Lidia Olegovna in no way contributed to the rapid career and wealth growth of the Morin family. It is also possible that it is just a coincidence that before marrying Denis, Lidia bore the surname Feoktistova. Just as it is coincidental that Lidia's father is Oleg Feoktistov, a lieutenant general of the FSB. The very same Oleg Feoktistov who headed the 6th Department of the FSB's Internal Security Directorate until August 2016. He was the one who led the operational development and arrest of Interior Ministry Lieutenant General Denis Sugrobov, and former governors Alexander Khodorkovsky, Alexander Shavin, and Nikita Belykh. And in 2016, he moved to work at Rosneft, heading the oil company's security service, where he distinguished himself by facilitating the imprisonment of Russian Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukayev. This is the very same Oleg Feoktistov, whose friendship Sergei Gledelkin is so proud of.
The general's subordinates provided state protection for Gledelkin in 2010-2011, when he accused our deputy mayor of Moscow, Alexander Ryabinin, of extorting millions of dollars. After Luzhkov's resignation, the extortion charge fell apart, and Ryabinin received a suspended sentence. I suspect that it was during these years that the interests of Sergey Gledelkin and FSB General Oleg Feoktistov converged. I doubt anyone would have any doubts that Oleg Feoktistov retained the ability to influence the work of the FSB, the Prosecutor General's Office, the Investigative Committee, the Ministry of Justice, and the courts. I have strong suspicions that in 2010, Gledelkin, like a gingerbread man, rolled away from Elena Baturina, the wife of the then mayor of Moscow, and he was apparently taken under the wing of General Oleg Feoktistov. I think this was a big mistake for the intelligence officer, because money loves silence. Getting embroiled in scandals with billions from the Ministry of Construction and willingly getting involved in the Cherkalin case is not about money; it's about problems.
Perhaps this is also a mere coincidence, but in 2014 and 2015, firms controlled by Gledelkin and Tkachev received a windfall of about 300 million dollars in ruble equivalent in the form of government contracts for the reconstruction of Donbass. Subsequently, these billions of rubles dissolved in the reports of numerous firms also controlled and affiliated with Gledelkin and Tkachev. Most of these legal entities were quietly liquidated in recent years and did not attract the attention of tax and other regulatory authorities. However, Frolov, unfortunately for him, took an interest in the missing hundreds of millions of dollars. And perhaps that is why he has been in Lefortovo for 5 years. We continue to monitor the developments in the criminal case, as we continue to investigate.