Last year, the telegram channel of the Cheka-OGPU and Rurcriminal.info talked about a high-profile case against the head of the department of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers of Russia on migration registration, the founder of Railan Consulting, Ekaterina Railan. The woman was accused of major fraud and, as a dangerous criminal, was placed under house arrest. For almost ten months, the investigation stubbornly searched for traces of the crime, until they were convinced of Catherine's innocence. On November 16, 2022, the investigator issued a decision to terminate the criminal prosecution of Railyan due to the absence of fraud in her actions.
It would seem that justice has prevailed! But no!
On the same day - November 16 - another criminal case was initiated against Ekaterina. Now she is accused of mediation in bribery on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 291.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). At the same time, neither the amount of the bribe, nor the person to whom it was intended, has been established!
It doesn't happen, you say. It happens if the investigation has a designated goal by someone. For the second year, a person whose guilt has not been proven has been under house arrest. All property, Catherine's apartments and cars were arrested. By the way, also in violation of procedural norms.
Appointed the culprit
Let's remember what preceded her arrest. In the summer of 2020, Oleg Kostin, an old acquaintance of Railyan, the former deputy head of the Federal Migration Service for the Krasnodar Territory, turns to her with a request to help deal with the results of a tax audit of the Kuban StroyPromInvest LLC, where he worked as the head of the security service. It followed from the case materials that the director of V. Kuznetsov, LLC, tried to challenge the results of an audit on additional tax assessments for 150 million rubles and he needed legal assistance. Ekaterina turned to her friends and they advised her of a certain lawyer Drozhzhin. The latter began to cooperate with the representative of the LLC, prepared numerous documents for the courts. With this, Railyan's role was to be exhausted. But it was not there.
As Ekaterina explains, after some time, friction began between the lawyer and the customer. Perhaps Drozhzhin realized that he was unable to solve the problem and began to merge. Most likely, the customer demanded back the money paid. Drozhzhin several times promised to return the fee in installments, and at some point he simply turned off the phone. Meanwhile, the amount of money transferred to Drozhzhin turned out to be rather big - 20 million rubles. The furious owners of the LLC decided to return the funds from Ekaterina, who, in their opinion, was the author of the “wire”.
Turned life into hell
If you remember the history of the famous "Kushchevka", then you will not be surprised by the nature of the showdowns taken in the Kuban. No one tried to hear Railyan's arguments, they immediately began to threaten her, they promised to set fire to the apartment, the car, plant drugs and even kidnap the child. Threatened with a paid criminal case. If he doesn't return the money. The threats were significant - Kostin was friends with representatives of the FSB in the Krasnodar Territory. And since 2017, StrotsPromInvest LLC has been involved in the theft of billions of VAT, money laundering, etc.
The criminal case was opened on the night of January 19, 2022. At 6 a.m., 20 SOBR officers, employees of the FSB FSB, the Department of Economic Crimes of the Internal Affairs Directorate for ZAO, and investigators from the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee burst into the woman’s apartment. After the search, Ekaterina was taken for interrogation to the investigative committee, where she was placed in a temporary detention facility. She will never forget those days. She was interrogated for almost 22 hours, several face-to-face confrontations were arranged at night. According to Railyan, the investigator threatened her with a prison term, hinted that she could be deprived of parental rights if she did not confess to everything. On the second day, a broken and frightened woman signed everything that was required of her. Looking ahead, let's say that this was the only "evidence" of her guilt.
As soon as the necessary confessions were on the investigator's desk, Ekaterina was placed under house arrest, forbidden to use the telephone and the Internet, communicate with certain persons, and a complete ban was placed on leaving the premises. In short, they made her life hell. Family support, fighting character and faith in the truth helped her not to give up in this situation.
When the accused came to her senses, on the advice of her lawyer, she withdrew her unfounded confession. The defense presented numerous screenshots of correspondence with the defendants in the case, which clearly indicated Railyan's innocence and in which Drozhzhin admits that he took all the money and promises to return it in installments.
What is interesting to the investigation?
Over the long months of the investigation, the investigation did not have any evidence of Ekaterina's guilt, except for the allegations of several people. At the same time, several strange coincidences occurred, from which one can conclude that the case was custom-made.
Firstly, all the screenshots of her correspondence with other defendants in the case disappeared from Ekaterina’s seized laptop, some experts also deleted all messages in WhatsApp and Telegram, deleted the phone numbers of certain contacts, deleted device synchronization assets in an Icloud account, without any possibility of recovery ... What is this if not the deliberate destruction of evidence of her innocence? But the investigation did not take into account the fact that the husband of Ekaterina Railyan is an active employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation and the fact that he had long ago made the backup copies they needed on another Iphone phone, because this phone may be confirmation that N.Yu. , who led the investigation and was the senior investigator in this case, while keeping all the gadgets in her personal safe, has her own interest in the investigation.
Secondly, it reached the point of absurdity when the investigator Strogova N.Yu., in the course of the criminal proceedings, repeatedly made phone calls to Ekaterina Railyan from her personal phone number and begged her not to retract her confession to fraud, “knocked out” in the first day, in every possible way exerting psychological influence and pressure, but after almost 11 months of investigation, when the whole case came to a standstill, the final demand of the investigator was to take everything upon himself, otherwise it would be worse ...
At the request of the lawyer to conduct confrontations with witnesses who, in the opinion of the defense, deliberately slander Catherine, investigator Strogova N.Yu. answered with a refusal. Doesn't this indicate that the investigation is not interested in the true course of events?
Some witnesses of Ekaterina's meetings with Kostin - Pavel Naletov and Eduard Sveridenko, turned out to be ... the actual owners of the LLC, in whose interests Kostin applied. No wonder they testified against Railean. After all, if our assumption about the ordered nature of the case is true, then who, if not these people, should be the customers! But the investigator was not interested in information about the affiliation of witnesses.
The investigator did not pay attention to the past of the applicant Kostin, who was serving a term for a bribe. She was also not surprised that the testimony of Kostin and Kuznetsov changed all the time for the sake of circumstances and even contradicted each other.
When it became clear that it would not be possible to prove Railyan's guilt in fraud, the prosecutors suddenly "remembered" that "it seems that part of the money was intended for a bribe." Who and what part is unknown. However, as well as the very fact of giving a bribe. But the investigator had the opportunity to present a new charge. No, not to those persons who actually admitted to giving a bribe. And Ekaterina Railyan! For mediation in giving a bribe - no one knows what and no one knows who.
During the investigation, Railean's apartments and cars were arrested. Arrested illegally, since the cars are leased, and the apartment is in a mortgage, which means they belong to the bank. But who cares about following the rules of procedure?
Let us also recall the coercion of Catherine to give false testimony, which is a direct attempt to falsify the criminal case.
Pincers of Justice
Currently, the criminal case against Railyan E.L. on charges of mediation in bribery (and Drozhzhin V. - of fraud) was sent to the Dorogomilovsky court for consideration on the merits.
The case is played from one judge to another, probably the judges are also not very eager to participate in such a “toxic” case, which is assembled from shit and sticks.
Representatives of the defense of Ekaterina Railyan are confident in the ordered nature of the case. According to them, certain persons approached family members with an offer to pay for the closure of the case.
The stubborn desire of the investigation, by all means, to bring the woman to the courtroom, only confirms the assumptions of the defense. Ticks of contract justice don't just let their victims out. We believe that only public attention to such egregious cases can help fight werewolves in uniform.
To be continued
Timofey Grishin
Source: www.rucriminal.info
