FSB general asked him to return $ 2 million collected for a bribe to Ulyukaev

FSB General Oleg Feoktistov, one of the organizers of the “Ulyukaev case,” asked to return the money allocated for the operational experiment with the minister. It was Feoktistov who found $2 million in cash with which Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukaev was detained at the Rosneft office in 2016.

Фото: Depositphotos

The fact that the court will decide the fate of the $2 million with which the minister was detained was announced on June 5 by court press secretary Emilia Gil. According to her, the meeting will resolve “issues regarding clarification of doubts and ambiguities that arise during the execution of the sentence regarding monetary funds.” However, she did not provide more detailed information.

As explained Russian service BBC Two interlocutors familiar with the case materials, but who asked for anonymity for their own security, asked Oleg Feoktistov to return the 2 million dollars to the Zamoskvoretsky court to return to him. The meeting will be held 29 June, it will hold a judge of the Zamoskvoretsky court Larisa Semenova, who sentenced Ulyukayeva.

Reading out the verdict to the ex-official on December 15, 2017, Judge Semenova said that the fate of the money would be decided after the verdict came into force. All other material evidence - including the bag in which the head of Rosneft Igor Sechin gave money to Ulyukaev, as well as a basket containing sausages "From Ivanovich" and 4 bottles of wine - was ordered by the court to be destroyed even then.

The sausage itself from Sechin’s “basket,” which the general director of Rosneft handed to Ulyukaev along with a bag of cash on November 15, 2016, was destroyed back in May last year at the request of investigators. The material evidence was liquidated as perishable.

Now, when the Moscow City Court has confirmed the sentence to Ulyukaev, the most expensive proof can be returned to the owner. However, as follows from the case file, Feoktistov, who asked to take 2 million dollars, does not own the money.

Where is the money?

The dollars, which in the case of the ex-minister were almost the main evidence, were brought to the court twice by the staff of the Investigative Committee (TFR) at the request of the prosecution. They were shown to the judge and participants in the process, put in a bag in which Ulyukayev received them, even weighed. However, the process did not reveal where they came from.

Feoktistov said in court that he borrowed dollars for an operational experiment from “a good friend, a private investor.” Sechin, in his testimony to investigators (they were not read out in court, but the BBC got acquainted with them), confirmed that $2 million was found by Feoktistov, who at that time headed the security service of Rosneft.

In his last speech, Ulyukaev wondered whether these funds could be “black cash, the so-called unaccounted for funds.”

The general revealed the name of the “acquaintance of the investor” only once, during the second interrogation with the investigator. During interrogation on June 5, 2017, Feoktistov told the investigator that the money was given to him at the end of October 2016 by “previously acquaintance Valery Aleksandrovich Mikhailov.”

The fact that at one of the interrogations of Feoktistov called this person the owner of 2 million dollars, the BBC was confirmed by two interlocutors who were familiar with the case materials and asked for anonymity for security reasons. The fact that Feoktistov called this name, previously wrote and the publication of RBC.

Feoktistov gave different information about Mikhailov: at different times he called him “an employee of our company” (“Rosneft” - BBC), who has the corresponding declared income,” “an acquaintance, a private investor,” and, finally, during interrogation 5 June Mikhailov was listed as “an employee of a company somehow connected with the activities of Rosneft.”

Feoktistov changed his testimony three times, talking about the “secret investor” of the operational experiment. Photo: Vedomosti

Man with income

Two million dollars is a significant amount even for a top manager at an oil company.

A BBC interlocutor in the management of Rosneft (requested anonymity as he is not authorized to comment on these issues) noted that annual salaries of up to $2 million can be received “only at the very top - the general director and members of the board.” “They definitely have more. In departments, most likely, such amounts do not reach,” he added.

Judging by information from the Rosneft website, members of the company’s board of directors can also receive significant remuneration. However, these amounts do not reach $2 million. Thus, the deputy chairman of the board of directors, Matthias Warnig, by decision of the annual general meeting of Rosneft shareholders on June 22, 2017, received $545 thousand.

Who is Oleg Feoktistov

Feoktistov is considered one of the most influential generals of the FSB. He is from 2004 of the year was deputy head of the FSB and He headed the 6-th service of the Office of the Office’s own security department, which is responsible for the operational support of criminal cases.

The FSB general himself never spoke to the press, his biography is known little.

There is no exact information about Feoktistov’s current place of work. It is known that he is no longer an employee of Rosneft. RBC wrote that he went over to work at Peresvet Bank as an adviserа on frames.

During interrogation in the Ulyukaev case on June 5, Feoktistov identified himself as an employee of the “P” department of the FSB (counterintelligence in industry). The BBC has a copy of the protocol.

Among the members of the board of Rosneft and related companies there are no people named Valery Mikhailov. An interlocutor in the management of Rosneft claims that he has not heard of a person with that name.

The only full namesake of Mikhailov associated with Rosneft, whom the BBC was able to discover, worked for the RN-Service company, 50,6% owned by Rosneft. RN-Service, according to information on the Rosneft website, is engaged in “increasing the efficiency of existing oil service enterprises.”

Valery Mikhailov served on the boards of directors of several companies that later merged with RN-Service, and worked for about a year in the Nizhnevartovsk branch of the company. Around December 2016, he left the company, the secretariat of the central office of RN-Service in Moscow, as well as the Nizhnevartovsk branch, told the BBC.

According to Feoktistov's memoirs, Sechin told him that Ulyukayev allegedly demanded a bribe from him immediately upon returning from the BRICS summit. Photo: TASS

The BBC contacted former RN-Service employee Valery Mikhailov. He said that he knows Oleg Feoktistov, “unfortunately, only from newspapers” and does not know him personally.

“Accordingly, I did not borrow money,” he said. Mikhailov added that he had never earned $2 million in his entire life. “If they give me this money back, I won’t mind,” he joked.

The BBC has addressed questions about Mikhailov to Rosneft, the FSB and the Investigative Committee of Russia, but has not yet received responses to its queries.

Why is the owner of money important in the case of Ulyukaev

No investigative actions were carried out with the “secret investor” and no witnesses were called to court, two BBC interlocutors familiar with the case materials told the BBC.

The state prosecution at the trial on the case of Ulyukaev asked to return 2 million dollars to the owner. Ulyukaeva’s lawyer, Larisa Kashtanova, said that it was impossible to fulfill the request to the prosecutor, since it was not clear to whom to return them.

Kashtanova stressed that in cases of receiving a bribe it is important to establish the source of the subject of the bribe, its belonging to the briber or to other persons.

“The identity of the private investor was not established during the judicial investigation, nor was the source of the funds established. During the preliminary investigation, we constantly changed his (the investor’s – BBC) personal data, his place of work and his affiliation with Rosneft PJSC,” the lawyer said.

Where does money come from for bribes

Prior to Ulyukayev, the loudest case of detaining an official red-handed was the case of the Kirov governor Nikita Belykh. He was detained in a Moscow restaurant while receiving 150 thousand euros, which were handed to him by businessman Yury Zudheimer. The former governor, as well as the ex-minister, calls his detention a provocation of the FSB.

Sudheimer said that before meeting with Belykh, he collected his own money and turned to the FSB. “They listened to me and said: “You don’t need money, we’ll give you ours,” the businessman said during interrogation.

During the trial in the Ulyukaev case, the lawyer of the former minister, Timofey Gridnev, recalled another case - the former head of the Main Directorate of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption (GUEBiPK) of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Denis Sugrobov, who was accused, among other things, of organizing the provocation of a bribe.

“In the Sugrobov case, attracting private funds for an operational experiment was a crime,” Gridnev recalled in court. Sugrobov was sentenced in April to 22 years in a maximum security colony.

Conducting investigative experiments is governed by the law on operational-search activity. According to him, the internal affairs bodies have the right to use the property of private individuals for operational activities.

The same law states that the identities of citizens who assisted in the investigation may be encrypted. For assistance to authorities, a person can receive a reward - it is not taxed and is not indicated in the income statement.

What did Ulyukaev say

The question of the origin of the $2 million was raised by Ulyukaev himself in his last speech. He, in particular, stated that “no one was interested, unlike similar cases of provoking bribes, in the true origin of this money.”

“Do they not indicate the existence of a black cash register in Rosneft, the so-called unaccounted for money; about illegal cash withdrawal or similar acts?,” said the former minister.

In his last word, Ulyukaev joked darkly about an “effective investor.” Photo: TASS

Ulyukaev also spoke ironically about Feoktistov’s words that the cash was provided by “a certain private investor.”

“So this is an investment! That is, investing 2 million dollars just like that, for an indefinite period of time, without a guarantee of return, at a zero rate - this is an investment. Some kind of straight story about an effective investor. Rosstat should be prompted to include this investment in its statistics,” the minister said at the last meeting.

The investment cannot be called profitable - the money “stuck” in the vault for a year and eight months. If on October 31, 2016, their owner had not given the money to Feoktistov, but had deposited it in a bank account at 2,6% per annum, he would have earned $85 thousand today.

What happens to Ulyukaev

The Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukaev was detained on November 14, 2016 at the Rosneft office in Moscow. The Investigative Committee of Russia claimed that the official was caught red-handed while receiving $2 million. According to investigators, he demanded a bribe of this amount from Sechin so that his department would give a positive opinion on Rosneft’s acquisition of the state-owned stake in Bashneft.

On December 15, 2017, the Zamoskvoretsky court found Ulyukaev guilty under the article “Receipt of a bribe by an official on an especially large scale.” The ex-minister was sentenced to eight years in a maximum security colony. The former official was taken into custody in the courtroom.

In April, the Moscow City Court rejected the appeal of the ex-official’s defense of the verdict, thus, the court decision entered into force. Sechin unexpectedly came to the meeting and testified in private.

Already on May 31, Ulyukaeva was convoyed to a colony, said Deputy Chairman of the Public Observation Commission (POC) of Moscow, Eva Merkacheva. Information confirmed the press service of the FPS. According to the interlocutors of the Russian service Bi-bi-si, close to Ulyukaev, the ex-official was transferred to a colony in the Tver region.

The next day, information appeared that the ex-minister had paid off the fine of 130 million rubles imposed by the court, and his defense was asking to lift the seizure of his property - 15 apartments and 10 land plots, as well as three accounts containing a total of 112 million rubles .

Ulyukayev also seized 250 thousand dollars in cash and several thousand pounds sterling, their investigators found in his office. And at his dacha in the Voronovskoye settlement in New Moscow, they found 300 thousand more dollars in cash.

Militiamen and four pairs of Swiss watches worth, the most expensive of which cost more than a half million rubles, as well as precious metal bars and savings books, were taken away.

The most unusual of Ulyukaev's seized property is an impressive collection of coins. They confiscated gold coins of 999 purity, the value of which ranged from 2,2 to 6,6 million rubles, as well as silver coins, which were valued from 14 to 342 thousand rubles. One of the coins with a face value of 25 thousand rubles weighs more than three kilograms.

Two lawyers Ulyukaeva on condition of anonymity confirmed the BBC that they petitioned to lift the arrest of Ulyukayev’s property. Zamoskvoretsky court will also consider it on June 29, after deciding the fate of 2 million dollars, in which Feoktistov is interested.

Ulyukaev’s defense has already appealed the decision of the Moscow City Court to the presidium of the court. He requested a criminal case from the Zamoskvoretsky court - most likely, consideration of the lawyers’ complaint will take about two months in this case.

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