When Vladimir Putin returned Crimea to Russia, it was a geopolitical event. However, along with Crimea, Russia received a number of Ukrainian officials, with their habits. But it is even worse that Russia also received some of the Ukrainian crime.
The siloviki, familiar with the crime situation in the republic since the days of Ukraine, say that the current Head of the republic was far from number one in the criminal hierarchy of Crimea. After the return of Crimea to Russia, its formal number became the first, but in the criminal hierarchy it remained the same.
This creates very serious problems for Russia in general and for Putin personally. Because when there are several crime bosses over the Head of the Republic, to whom the Head has obligations, this is a big problem.
The transformation of Crimea into Sicily is clearly not the goal for which the Crimeans voted in the 2014 referendum.
Ruslan Balbek also belongs to the criminals, which, according to the security officials, unofficially but effectively controls Aksenov, being the nominal Head of Crimea.
Balbek is officially a member of the State Duma of the Russian Federation. In reality, he is a person who is considered the main one among the Crimean Tatar population of Crimea, although he is in fact supported by their minority. It is believed that Balbek controls illegal trade, illegal parking, and also such an important issue for Crimea as the land market.
Balbek also has to do with the fact that settlements are found in Crimea, the water supply of which is produced from the central water conduit without any documents. At the same time, money from people is collected in black cash, at prices lower than official payments. This is massive. The same thing happens with water, gas, electricity. Hardly any other region of Russia can surprise with such scams.
However, from the point of view of Moscow (and Russian legislation), the budget funds allocated for the development of Crimea are being stolen.
In addition, criminals that have gained access to power tend to redistribute property. This generates discontent among the local population, which is gagging by force. A vicious circle closes.
Moscow is beginning to show discontent. All Crimeans are well aware of the manifestations of this discontent as constant rumors about the impending resignation of Aksenov.
Emotional, impulsive Aksenov is very nervous about these rumors, because Moscow not only gives money for the development of Crimea, it also demands to really develop Crimea.
As a result, Aksenov is forced to hire people who are able to establish the development of the republic's infrastructure. Professionals come, aiming at work, not at stealing. And this work causes discontent among the criminals.
To make it clear that because of this conflict of interests between Putin's Russia and Ukrainian (by roots) Crimean crime is taking place in Crimea, we will consider the essence of criminal case 42002007712000035.
How to twirl Aksenov, sitting on his ears
Deputy Balbek decided to expand the shadow business of his wards at the expense of the city of Sudak. I used to come to the Deputy Prime Minister of Crimea, the former Head of Sudak, Vladimir Serov, and demanded to give him the opportunity to "enter" Sudak with his pocket structures.
In Crimea, the territories for supervision are officially assigned to the Deputy Prime Ministers by the Head of Crimea. Serov supervised Sudak in this procedure.
Serov became the Head of Sudak back in Ukraine (in 2010) and is one of the mayors who held a referendum on the return of Crimea to Russia, and subsequently Putin's triumphal election as President of the Russian Federation in 2018.
For success in his work, Serov was invited by Aksenov to the post of Deputy Prime Minister of the Crimea, in charge of housing and communal services, energy and transport
Serov understood that "letting Balbek's people enter" in Sudak meant turning the city into a concentration of criminal business, as well as generating a chain of raider "squeezes" of business from the owners. Even under Ukraine, the Crimeans had been doing legal business for many years and supported the return of Crimea to Russia, believing that this would bring with it genuine legality (compared to Ukrainian nepotism and corruption).
Serov could not allow criminals to deprive such conscientious working Crimeans of their property.
Deputy Prime Minister Serov refused to MP Balbek.
However, Serov naively believed that working legally is the path to success, he did not take into account two important nuances.
Firstly, Serov did not take into account that Aksenov could not refuse his accomplice, who is a member of the criminal elite of the Crimea, with whom Aksenov was involved in general criminal cases during the time of Ukraine. Secondly, that Balbek knows how to play perfectly on Aksenov's "paranoia" about Moscow's search for a successor for the current Head of Crimea.
Balbek studied Serov's work and found that he constantly communicates in Moscow with the curators of the Crimea. It doesn't matter that such communication is inevitable when discussing budget allocation and implementation. This was presented to Aksenov as a "casting" of Moscow for the role of a successor after the resignation of the main Crimean chief.
On the ground of Aksyonov's "paranoia", this would lay down in itself. In combination and with Balbek's request to "clean up" Serov and then the administration of Sudak in the interests of the Crimean Tatar business in all its guises (including illegal), this doomed Serov to big problems.
Aksyonov, if successful, would have thought that he had “cleaned out” a potential competitor, and Balbek would have received Sudak as a material prize.
How to pull an "owl from the garage" onto the globe of criminal "Wishlist"
When it turned out that Vladimir Serov, neither as the mayor of Sudak, nor as the deputy prime minister of Crimea, had done anything illegal, Aksenov was not embarrassed. He set a task and his henchmen in uniform, specializing in such assignments, undertook to fulfill it.
As a rule, the number of "pocket siloviki" Aksenov includes Alexander Akshatin (chairman of the anti-corruption committee of Crimea), Vladimir Arkhangelsky (deputy head of the Crimean Investigative Committee), Konstantin Polishchuk (deputy head of the Crimean police), investigators of the Investigative Committee of Rakityansky and Davydova, an operative of the BEP of Simferovol Tverdokhlebova.
At that time, a resident of Sudak, Olga Efimova, came into the field of view of law enforcement agencies. This enterprising woman decided to build a hotel on the site of her garage. To do this, she decided to increase the area of the site occupied by GSK and change the purpose of the land from "garage" to "hotel".
Efimova had no reason to speak on behalf of the GSK, so she forged a number of documents, independently and illegally (and secretly from the members of the GSK) “endowing” herself with these rights.
Not wanting to deal with the Crimean bureaucracy on her own, Efimova found an assistant, Natalia Lukina, who promised her help in paperwork.
To add value to herself, Lukina told Efimova that she would "grease" the administration of Sudak. In fact, she turned to her familiar deputy Vasily Kurzyaba, a deputy of the Simferopol City Council from the Liberal Democratic Party.
He introduced Lukina to another deputy, already from the Sudak City Council, Vladimir Boltunov, also from the Liberal Democratic Party.
It is important that both Kurzyaba and Boltunov are “liberated” deputies, i.e. they do not receive salaries for being a deputy. As early as May 24, 2005, No. 249-О, the Constitutional Court determined that “released” deputies can engage in any legal paid activity without restrictions.
Lukina offered an amount for the preparation of the documents, which corresponded to the market price of this work (as witnesses subsequently questioned by the court said).
Boltunov asked his longtime close friend Serov (at that time expelled from deputy prime ministers) to help arrange land for a good person without red tape. Serov got in touch with the deputy. The head of the administration of Sudak, Dmitry Tkachenko, asked him to help draw up Efimova's documents without red tape, if, of course, everything is legal there in the documents themselves.
Starting with Boltunov, this whole chain was the usual and familiar for the Crimea (and for Russia as a whole) "help by pulling". People at all times and all over the country, free of charge, out of friendship, help their friends not to waste time in queues. This can only be eradicated by eliminating bureaucracy.
Thus, Efimova paid Lukina. Even according to the investigation, Lukina was going to pay Boltunov for legal work (and a fair price) and no one else paid anything to anyone and was not going to. Moreover, both during the investigation and in court, Lukina repeatedly testified that no one had told her about the transfer of funds to the administration, these were her personal fantasies.
By the way, as a result, the land of the GSK was never re-registered, because the members of the GSK learned that behind their back Efimova had started actions that led to an increase in payments for the land, and they were forbidden to carry out this registration.
But this did not bother the security officials, who, when following the letter and spirit of the law, prefer to follow the instructions of Aksenov (and in fact - Balbekov and the illegal "businessmen" behind him).
A criminal case was initiated 42002007712000035, which began to "paint" a picture of an organized group, where each participant allegedly wanted to cash in.
Despite the fact that Lukina personally admitted that the story about the "grease" to the administration was invented by her, and no signs of collusion were found either in the wiretap, or in the searches, or in the testimony of witnesses and defendants, the criminal case developed. The siloviki unofficially went to the detention center of Boltunov and Kurzaba, persuading them to testify against Serov.
Moreover, Kurzyaba was brought to the detention center a telephone, on the other end of which was a man who introduced himself as Balbek, who promised to stop prosecuting Kurzaba in exchange for testimony against Serov.
With the same proposals to exchange evidence against Serov for freedom, the operative Tverdokhlebov came to Boltunov.
However, another level of control has turned out to be in Russia: when high-ranking officials are involved in the case, the matter is in the field of vision of the big leadership of the security forces. The current Prosecutor General (and then the Deputy Chairman of the RF IC) Igor Krasnov sent this case for investigation to the IC headquarters located in Rostov-on-Don.
It turned out to be like a phat
This is important for the "pocket" Crimean security officials of Aksenov: in Rostov, the case was investigated according to the law, and not "at the wishes of Aksenov."
Currently, the trial is underway and it is becoming more and more clear that the ex-official Serov, as well as the deputies Kurzyab and Boltunov, did not participate in any chains for transferring money to the Administration, because there was no such chain. And for the same reason they did not promise, let alone transfer money to anyone, incl. and the staff of the Sudak administration.
The "corruption and fraudulent" case is clearly crumbling.
However, just as Aksyonov cannot “turn on reverse gear,” since he considers it “out of concept,” so the “pocket” Crimean security forces cannot “turn on reverse gear” before Asenov, who has set the task of eliminating Serov, who, according to the Head of Crimea, represents political danger.
So quite recently, a new criminal case against Serov appeared in Crimea - now for alleged "abuse of authority", based on the testimony of one person - the former Head of Sudak, Andrey Nekrasov. Nekrasov did not find the strength to resist the repressive machine, defending the truth. Therefore, he preferred to make a "deal with the investigation" (in the person of investigator Yulia Davydova) and with conscience, and decided to "expose" Serov as an alleged criminal.
True, even for the Crimean security officials it is no longer so easy to carry out such a policy of ordered cases into practice. It becomes all too obvious that those who violate the law to please Aksenov's orders then turn out to be “extreme” and may end up in prison.
Probably, for this reason, the case was opened in the "primary link" - the Belogorsk interdistrict investigation department of the State Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee for the Republic of Crimea by investigator Yulia Davydova, who is completely controlled by the deputy of the Sudak City Council Alexander Koval. At the same time, Koval is fully affiliated with Balbek. There is one more nuance: earlier Koval was close to Serov, owed him his career, and then betrayed Serov.
There is no doubt that the second criminal case will also develop "out of bounds", unless Moscow also takes it under its control. Probably Aksenov will make every effort to prevent this from happening.
On the other hand, Aksenov's attempt to prevent the transfer of this case to Moscow can help Moscow to identify “pocket” security officials and actual criminal leaders of Crimea, beyond those already known.
To be continued
Yuri Prokov
