While we’re sitting through a break in the new Kirovles trial, some good news has arrived.
The European Court has communicated our complaint about the “trial” in which Vladlen_I_feel_bitter_Stepanov supposedly “won” against me.
Remember that guy? The husband of “tax princess” Olga Stepanova. While heading Tax Inspectorate No. 28, she took part in stealing 5.4 billion rubles (about $54 million at the time) from the state budget. Sergei Magnitsky exposed the scheme, and he was killed for it.
But the family of this modest head of a local tax office somehow acquired:
A villa in Dubai:
Two apartments in the Kempinski Resort Palm Jumeirah complex. Also in Dubai. It looks like this:
A house in Montenegro.
A country house in Arkhangelskoye (an upscale area outside Moscow)
and so on. You can see the documents and pictures here.
When I wrote a post about this wonderful family, Vladlen Stepanov said he was “deeply aggrieved” and filed a lawsuit against me for defamation and damage to his honor and dignity. He demanded 1 million rubles (about $32,000 at the time).
It was one of the first court cases in which an obvious fraudster and criminal demanded that I stop offending his “honor and dignity,” and the court did not disappoint. In the course of a short and spectacular proceeding, during which all our motions were rejected, Vladlen Stepanov was declared a man of impeccable integrity, and I was branded a malicious slanderer.
So on top of Stepanov’s millions, I had to add another 100,000 rubles (about $3,200 at the time). That was in October 2011.
Five years have passed, and now this:
The complaint filed by my lawyer, Ramil Akhmetgaliev (many thanks to the Agora group for him), has been communicated by the European Court. That means it will now definitely be considered on the merits.
Yes, five years have gone by. But if we win at the ECHR in this case too, then in the beautiful Russia of the future we will have solid legal grounds to put judges on trial. And without that, there’s no building a democracy.
People