For the umpteenth time, we’ve forced the Moscow Economic Crimes Unit of the city police, through the prosecutor’s office, to act after it refused to investigate the VTB embezzlement case. How much longer can this go on? At this point, all we’re asking for is that a criminal case be opened. And yet the passions this stirs up are unbelievable!
I’m starting to suspect that Senior Detective of Department 6, 1st Operational Investigative Unit for Economic Crimes, Moscow City Police, Police Major Konstantin Melekhin derives some kind of perverse pleasure from, uhhhh... prosecutorial oversight. Then again, there may be other explanations. Major Melekhin (who clearly does not look like the ultimate beneficiary of his own efforts) may simply be diligently working off someone else’s gilded pen — a Russian euphemism for a bribe. In the hope that one day he himself will become Colonel Melekhin, able to hold out his own pen to be gilded. But really, the stance of the Interior Ministry and the prosecutor’s office is something else. A case involving the obvious theft of $150 million is being tossed around as if it were a case about stealing doughnuts from old lady Marfa’s stall at Yaroslavsky railway station in Moscow. Victory over legal nihilism is drawing ever closer.