Today, all media outlets are quoting the Interior Ministry website, which reported the arrest in France of former Moscow Region Finance Minister Alexei Kuznetsov. Alexei Kuznetsov, former First Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Region Government and Finance Minister of the Moscow Region Government, has been detained in France at the request of Russian law enforcement authorities. Several forged passports were seized from him at the time of his arrest. Since November 2012, he had been on the international wanted list through Interpol channels on suspicion of committing crimes on the territory of the Russian Federation under the articles “Fraud,” “Money Laundering of Funds Obtained Through Criminal Activity,” and “Embezzlement.” As previously reported, Kuznetsov is suspected of crimes in the housing and utilities sector of the Moscow Region, resulting in damage to the regional budget totaling more than 3.5 billion rubles (about $100 million at the time). The issue of Kuznetsov’s extradition to the Russian Federation is currently being decided. http://mvd.ru/news/item/1086972/ It’s a pity the Interior Ministry and the Investigative Committee aren’t saying how long it took to force them to put Kuznetsov into the Interpol database—the very thing that led to his arrest today. The Kuznetsov story is astonishing in general. This wonderful official quite literally robbed and bankrupted one of Russia’s richest federal subjects (regions). Because of him, the Moscow Region even defaulted on its bonds. No one with even a gram of intelligence has the slightest doubt that Mr. Kuznetsov could never have pulled off his charming tricks without the direct involvement of higher-ranking regional and federal officials. First and foremost, former Moscow Region Governor Boris Gromov, who is now quietly serving as a United Russia deputy in the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament):
Obviously, no one was exactly eager to arrest Kuznetsov, and for years he not only lived openly in France, but also partied happily in Courchevel with officials, including members of the “siloviki” (security and law-enforcement elite):
But the main Christmas sensation was the trio of Russian Olympic Committee President Leonid Tyagachev, Presidential Property Management Director Vladimir Kozhin, and Federal Protective Service Director Army General Yevgeny Murov. Vacationers who recognized them could not hide their surprise. They joked that the officials were not on holiday but on a business trip—studying foreign experience. Mr. Kozhin and General Murov appeared in public together with fashion designer Valentin Yudashkin and ARTES Cultural Foundation President Alexander Dostman. Another surprising sight was the husband of one of Courchevel’s grandees, RIGroup president Zhanna Bullock—former Moscow Region Finance Minister Alexei Kuznetsov. He is currently wanted. But his wife, they say, despite everything, bought another Courchevel hotel this year—“Prolong.” Mr. Kuznetsov, wearing a floor-length fur coat, was spotted in the Hermes store choosing purchases. Wonderful, isn’t it? They robbed the Moscow Region, live in France, buy hotels there, and dance alongside the head of Putin’s security detail. Back in January of this year, after reading yet another round of media reports about Kuznetsov and his peaceful life in Europe, I was once again amazed: how is that even possible? According to Interior Ministry statements, he was in the Interpol database. For example, I have a client who is in the Interpol database, and he can’t leave the United States, where he lives, at all. How is Kuznetsov managing it? So I went and checked the Interpol database. And Kuznetsov wasn’t there. Which means that all these years the Interior Ministry was brazenly lying when it said Kuznetsov was internationally wanted. More than that, Kuznetsov has actually been under arrest in absentia since 2011. And yet they never entered him into Interpol’s wanted-persons database. They “forgot.” These were the inquiries submitted on the matter:
At the time, the Interior Ministry and the Investigative Committee brushed off our letters with formal boilerplate replies:
But they had nowhere to go. They realized we were going to make a huge scandal out of their years-long lies about Kuznetsov being internationally wanted. A couple of months later, while we were waiting for responses to our other inquiries about Kuznetsov, he appeared in the database. Here we already wrote about this story.
Of course, I can’t say for certain that Kuznetsov has now been detained because we finally forced our “law enforcement” agencies to put him into the international wanted database, but the story is revealing nonetheless. Now let’s see how actively the Investigative Committee pursues his extradition—and what happens to former Governor Gromov. Will he be charged as an accomplice in the Kuznetsov case, or will he go on sitting in the Duma with an air of importance, fighting “foreign agents” and “opposition figures—the West’s planted operatives”.