Processes of 2023
In 2023, Russian courts had approximately one million criminal cases in progress. Only in the first half of 2023, courts received 377,357 criminal cases. 366,680 of them were managed to be reviewed. 295,090 defendants were convicted. 966 were acquitted. 125,373 cases were reviewed in a special procedure, without examining evidence. In these cases, 103,357 people were convicted. 24,655 cases were terminated. In total, criminal prosecution was terminated for 72,080 people. And this was over the course of a month. This is only for the first half of 2023.
All these figures are posted on the website of the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. Throughout 2023, I did not deal with statistics. I followed the developments in specific court cases. These were not ordinary stories, but landmark ones. That is why I turned to this. Among all the criminal cases of 2023, for which we filmed programs, the most memorable for me personally were the stories of 86-year-old Fadhulla Iskhakov, businessman Valery Markelov, and housewife Zarema Musaev. Let me remind you of these stories. Back in 1959, 22-year-old Fadhulla Iskhakov was sentenced to 15 years in a colony for attempting to murder three women. Iskhakov did not commit this crime. But the Soviet law enforcement system did not bother to investigate and labeled him a criminal. Iskhakov served 13 years. His family did not wait for his release. First, his wife passed away, then his child. At the age of 64, Fadhulla Iskhakov sought to overturn the conviction for crimes he did not commit.
And on May 25, 2023, the Judicial Panel for Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of Russia overturned the verdict issued in 1959. Due to Fadhulla Iskhakov's non-involvement in the crime, the Judicial Panel for Criminal Cases of Russia overturned the verdict for the crime. I talked about the fate of Fadhulla Iskhakov in the programs "Rough Justice" and "The Swirl of Justice." You can watch these episodes via the links under this video. You can also subscribe to the channel there. In September 2023, the Leninsky District Court of Ufa awarded Iskhakov 31 million 600 thousand rubles in compensation for unlawful criminal prosecution and 13 years spent in Bashkir colonies. But someone in Bashkortostan was not pleased with this amount. The prosecutor's office appealed the decision, and on December 25, the appellate court reduced the compensation amount to 2 million rubles. The court valued 13 years spent in the colony and 64 years of fighting for justice at 2 million rubles.
No shame, no conscience. This is my firm evaluative judgment. Because it turns out that according to their inner convictions, each of the judges in the appellate instance is ready to spend 13 years in captivity if they are not compensated for it. And these 13 years, erased from their lives, will be paid 2 million rubles each. Am I right? A cruel decision by the Bashkir court. The second significant case, which I talked about last year in several episodes, is the case of businessman Valery Markelov. One of the founders of the 15-20 group of companies, Valery Markelov was arrested and sent to Lefortovo in October 2018. He was accused of regularly paying bribes. Valery Markelov was guilty of the murder of Dmitry Zakharchenko, who, after his arrest, was found to have a huge amount of money—about 8 billion rubles in equivalent. The origin of this money has not yet been established.
To somehow make ends meet and explain where Dmitry Zakharchenko's cubic meters of money came from, the operatives and investigators apparently needed Valery Markelov. When Markelov was arrested and sent to Lefortovo, they tried to reach an agreement with him. They insisted. If he admitted that he regularly paid bribes to Dmitry Zakharchenko, he would be immediately released from prison and the criminal prosecution would be dropped. But they couldn't reach an agreement. Markelov did not admit his guilt, did not break down, and stubbornly continued to prove his innocence regarding Zakharchenko's billions. The FSB Directorate apparently also knew perfectly well about Valery Markelov's innocence in the crime of bribing Dmitry Zakharchenko. Even on July 22, 2019. Dmitry Zakharchenko. Deputy Head of the M Directorate, Major General, signed a decree to provide the results of operational investigative activities to the investigator or the court. This document mentioned the bank "Novoie Vremya," established in 2008.
It was this bank that, through murky schemes, siphoned off about a trillion rubles from Russia. Among the founders of the bank was Ukrainian citizen Valery Razdorochny. Later, Ivan Tankevich and Dmitry Motorin joined the bank's management. These bankers became the main beneficiaries of the shadow banking activities of the new era. A document signed by an FSB general recorded that the profits from the bank's shadow activities were distributed in the following proportions: Razdorochny 40%, Tankevich 20%, Motorin 20%, and 20% went to police colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko. Colonel Zakharchenko did not receive bribes from the bankers. He was an equal partner with the banksters and received a 20% share of the shadow business's income. This is also evidenced by the fact that Zakharchenko was arrested in September 2016, while the criminal group continued to operate and siphon money out of Russia until 2019. And Zakharchenko continued to receive a share of the business even while in prison. The truth about Zakharchenko's billions seems to have begun to come to light.
But it's true. The truth turned out to be of no use to anyone. The criminal case against Valery Markelov was never going to be dropped. He remained in Lefortovo even after his terrible illness became known. He was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, which had metastasized to the liver. With this deadly disease, Markelov spent another six months in a prison cell, suffering from excruciating pain and not receiving all the necessary medications. Only on May 24, 2022, a week after Federal Judge Sergey Artemov of the Presnensky District Court of Moscow delivered the verdict, was Markelov released. He was finally given proper medical treatment. But it was already too late. Medicine could only delay the inevitable. However, in the last months of his life, Markelov was not in a prison cell but surrounded by family and loved ones. The verdict against him never came into legal force. At 3 a.m. on July 13, 2023, Valery Anatolyevich Markelov, who was 57 years old, left this world.
He left neither broken nor resigned. And his criminal prosecution was terminated. Another significant criminal case we reported on in 2023 is the case of Zarema Musaev, who was sentenced to 5 years in a settlement colony on very dubious charges. This sordid story began on January 20, 2022, when Zarema Musaev, suffering from a whole bouquet of chronic illnesses, was forcibly taken from Nizhny Novgorod. In home clothes, in slippers, without medicine, almost kidnapped from the apartment where she lived with her husband, federal judge Saidi Yangulbaev. Zarema was taken by car 2000 kilometers to Grozny for questioning as a witness in a fraud case. But once there, Zarema was accused of attacking a police officer and participating in fraud. According to the prosecution's version, which made it into the verdict, the seriously ill 54-year-old woman grabbed the baton of Lieutenant Magomed Abdulhamidov.
She grabbed him so tightly that the police officer couldn't break free from her grip. And this grip held up in both the district court and the appellate court. One wonders how Lieutenant Abdulhamidov will protect the residents of Grozny from criminal encroachments if he couldn't even protect himself? How is he supposed to look his relatives in the eye? Remembering the rockets, what kind of day it was when an elderly woman dragged him into the grip? After all, he recounted this incident during interrogations and in court. The details of this story can be recalled by watching the program "Hostage Zarema." The link is under this video. Let's continue. The year 2023 was also memorable for criminal cases in which the courts showed unprecedented humanism. For example, the criminal case against three Lithuanian citizens and two Russians accused of smuggling six batches of cocaine into Russia, totaling 472 kilograms. The Moscow City Court found the defendants not guilty and released them in the courtroom.
The prosecutor's office appealed the verdict, but the defendants in the criminal case, citizens of Lithuania, had already managed to leave Russia. The verdict was also lenient for the former deputy of the Tatarstan parliament, 43-year-old Rustam Khasanov. On November 3, the Moscow District Court of Kazan found him guilty of illegal acquisition and possession of drugs and sentenced him to 1 year of imprisonment, but conditionally, with a probation period of 1 year, under part 1 of article 228 of the Criminal Code of Russia. The police detained Khasanov on September 17, 2023. In the baggie he managed to drop, there were 1.88 grams of mephedrone. Khasanov admitted his guilt, repented, resigned his deputy powers, and filed a petition for the criminal case to be considered in a special manner, without examining the evidence. Therefore, apparently, he got off with a suspended sentence. I told the story of the now former deputy Rustam Khasanov in the program "Mephedrone Dealer with a Mandate." It is noteworthy that Khasanov became a deputy of the State Council of Tatarstan in September 2018, when a mandate became available in Kazan, in the Chuykovsky district.
In 2019, Khasanov won the elections in the same district again. And until December 2021, Khasanov worked in the Tatarstan parliament alongside another deputy. The rector of Kazan University, Ilshat Gafurov, who was arrested on December 21, 2021, on charges of a crime committed back in 1999. The trial of Ilshat Gafurov is ongoing in the Savelovsky District Court of Moscow. I intend to follow the developments in this case this year as well. Because the story of one of the bloodiest gangs in Russia, OPG-29, and the murder on August 28, 1999, in Moscow in a parking lot near the market located in the CSKA sports complex, of the Elabuga businessman and deputy Israfylov turned out to be very interesting to viewers. In any case, the program "Interior Ministry General and the Brotherhood," posted on October 2 of last year, turned out to be the most viewed in 2023. This episode was watched by about 200 thousand viewers. My plans for 2024 include continuing to follow the developments in such high-profile criminal cases as, for example, the Tagansky gang case, which is still being heard in the Moscow City Court. I am also interested in how the criminal case against retired FSB Colonel Dmitry Frolov, which is ongoing in the Moscow Military Garrison Court, will conclude, and I continue to monitor it as well. Subscribe to the channel; unfortunately, it won't be boring. The times are such, not boring.