Tied to the ground

The owner of the "Tervolina" chain Vadim Stepanov is accused of fraud with land plots in the elite zones of the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region

The investigation of the criminal case of the owner of the Tervolin network Vadim Stepanov has been completed. The entrepreneur, together with an employee of his company, Andrei Yakovlev, is accused of fraud with land plots located in the elite zones of the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region. The damage from the activities of the accused is estimated by the investigation at more than 1 billion rubles.

The criminal prosecution of the owner of the Tervolina network began five years ago after the Rosprirodnadzor completed an inspection of the use of the lands of the state forest fund in the area of ​​the elite village of Nikolina Gora. The audit revealed that part of the maps with land allotments was missing, and for all the inquiries of the inspectors, the forest fund workers, as Oleg Mitvol, who conducted this check, recalled, "weaved some incredible fables that the documents were eaten by mice, and the copies were burned in a fire." But when the lost documents were found, it turned out that 26 hectares of forests that belonged to the Zvenigorod forestry somehow ended up in private ownership (note that at that time the market value of 1 hectare of land in this area was $ 5 million).

The audit materials were sent to law enforcement agencies and soon formed the basis of the criminal case instituted in October 2007 under Art. 159 of the Criminal Code (fraud on a particularly large scale). Recently, Art. 174 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (legalization of funds obtained by criminal means). Vadim Stepanov was arrested, but after filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov, viola player Yuri Bashmet, president of the journalism faculty of Moscow State University, Yasen Zasursky, and a number of other famous cultural figures, an entrepreneur under their guarantee, and also on bail 10 million rubles, came out in his defense. He was released from jail.

As stated in the materials of the case, the investigation believes that Vadim Stepanov has developed and implemented an ingenious fraudulent scheme in order to seize federal land. Having entered, according to the investigation, into an agreement with "some members" of the board of the dacha consumer cooperative "Workers of Science and Art" (RANIS), he "by deception and forged documents" first annexed a part of the forestry territory to its territory under the guise of taking a land inventory. Then he secured a letter signed by one of the members of the RANIS board, according to which the cooperative had already refused new plots. On the basis of this document, and also referring to the decision of the general meeting of RANIS, a year later, the head of the Odintsovo district issued a decree approving the new borders of the cooperative and instructed the committee on land resources to amend the documents of the state land cadastre, securing, as stated in the case materials, “Illegal seizure of lands of the state forest fund”. Having received all the documents, the owner of the shoe network, according to the investigation, bought the site for $ 16 thousand, after which "under fictitious sale and purchase agreements" these lands were transferred to the relatives and friends of Vadim Stepanov, and were also formalized as allegedly retired servicemen (they received minor compensation for signing fake documents) to give the whole scheme the appearance of legitimate.

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At the final stage of the scam, according to the investigation, these plots were already resold to “third parties” for housing construction at market value. The damage from the actions of Vadim Stepanov and his accomplice is estimated by the investigation at more than 1 billion rubles. A written undertaking not to leave was taken from both accused.

The lawyer of the owner of the shoe chain Aleksandra Alitovskaya explained: despite the fact that the materials collected by the investigation comprise 175 volumes, she did not find any evidence of her client's guilt in them. The lawyer is sure that Mr. Stepanov did not commit illegal actions, and the case against him is an attempt to take the company away from him. The newspaper "Kommersant" writes about this.