The celebrated Tri Kita case (fittingly, Three Whales) was investigated over 8 years and was featured with great conflict of interests among high ranking officials from FSB, MVD, customs office and Prosecutor General’s office. 50 counts are being considered now at Naro-Fominsky court in the near-Moscow region. Evaluating the outcomes of the large-scale examination, the experts say regretfully that a corruption epopee with participation of the top persons from enforcing bloc has been turned into a small story of furniture smuggling.    

Today’s declarations of struggle with corruption look very nice, in theory. However, the political determination shown by Vladimir Putin once when the Tri Kita case was got off the ground, was only enough to accuse a few businessman and to revive the old inter-agency and internal intrigues. High ranking enemies exchanged strokes and came to the President with reports on one another. Several FSB generals retired quietly to have a nice life well provided for. The top persons involved were not affected in any way. As for those investigating, they were prosecuted themselves like the investigator Pavel Zaitsev, two employees from the customs, who began the examination of the case, and kept in the prison general of drug traffic agency Alexander Bulbov, who executed the operative supervision of the case investigation.     

One of the principal witnesses, Sergei Pereverzev, was killed right at the hospital (the murder was not solved). Yuri Shchekochihin, deputy editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta and deputy chair of the Security Committee at the State Duma, insisted on more detailed investigation to be held. He tried to make it public all that under-the-carpet struggle and he disturbed the big players in that conflict. Shortly before his death he had received many life threats and he died in summer 2003 right before his planned trip to the USA where he had been going to discuss the ways of money laundering related to Tri Kita case, with FBI officers.   

Today even the lawyers of the businessman Sergei Zuev – the owner of the furniture malls who is the principal accused in the case now – seem perplexed with the fact that with 8 years of the case lasting and 3,000 people interrogated, it is mentioned only the volume of furniture for 62 million rubles and 18 million rubles of underpayment. 

“Can it really be that all the high ranking officials we have been told about were dealing around such a ludicrous amount of money? If we share it among the 9 accused persons, it turns out that they got even less than $100,000 per head!” expressed his surprise Kirill Polishchiuk, the lawyer of Sergei Zuev.  

Tri Kita case was divided into two parts. The 50 counts examined in the court now is the case # 18/377522-06. It contains no hints not only at high ranking patrons from the public servants group, but even at the customs officers who stamped the forged documents allowing releasing the smuggled furniture on sale. Another case # 18/191746-00, where the customs officers and law enforcement officers are to be mentioned, still remains in the Investigative Committee at the Prosecutor General’s office, and it contains 300-500 counts. That case is commissioned to the investigator Deptizky at the moment.   

The lawyer Polishchiuk stated that his defendant Zuev has not been examined yet within the frames of the second case, despite his numerous applications to the investigator expressing the intentions to give testimony about top level corruption. According to opinion by defense, the case was not passed to St Petersburg probably so that to spare the Baltic Customs and Petersburg Sea port which were the channels of furniture smuggling in question.  

The case was left in the near-Moscow Naro-Fominsky court. Vladimir Loskutov, who has been heading the investigative group until recently, was sent back to Petersburg with a new appointment. He agreed unofficially to share his opinion with Novaya Gazeta.   

“I consider it that I have done everything I was commissioned to” said Mr. Loskutov, but he noted that there are still people who are interested in messing up the investigation, and those people are acting from different sides. Mr. Loskutov agrees that it is far from being a situation where all the really guilty find themselves to be on the dock. 

According to this former head of the investigative group, some influential people were unnaturally alleged to be involved in Tri Kita case and some of them had to resign. Mr. Loskutov believes that the media harmed the investigation with mentioning known names. Even though those forcibly retired had nothing to do with the case, it became principally important for them to prove they were wrongly compromised, and to demonstrate there has been much ado about nothing. As for those really guilty, it was advantageous for them to play off one group with another, as it helped them to escape liability.   

It has been mentioned repeatedly that investigation of the Tri Kita case was commissioned to Vladimir Loskutov after personal instruction given by Putin. However, to a question of why the investigator, who has examined the case so well during these years, why hasn’t he been ordered to deal with the second – and larger scaled - part of this case, to this question Mr. Loskutov said “I don’t know”. But anyway, he expressed his confidence that the case examination would be continued.   

“I believe that Vladimir Loskutov was sent to Petersburg so that the second part of the case is not investigated properly, as it might affect many high ranking people” considers the investigator Pavel Zaitsev. “The man has been engaged in this investigation for many years, and the fact he was not allowed to continue can only be considered to be an attempt of burying this case”. 

“When Tri Kita case was reanimated and they said it had been done with President Putin’s will, I was asked whether I felt that justice triumphed” recalls Marat Faizullin, the man ho started the case investigation. “I answered that no. The law must be executed in any case. And when it is done at President’s will, that makes me alert…”  

Mr. Faizullin stresses that he cannot understand what kind of justice it is being talked about when Tri Kita case has been turned into a banal smuggling story despite the fact the merging of power and business and the conflict collision of different law enforcing bodies, prosecutor’s office and special services was seen most clearly there.   

“Real public servants were proved to be involved, and their names were published along with the tapping scripts of their phone calls, and what was next? Those people are still in power and they demonstrate their impunity” is indignant Marat Faizullin.  

The protocol of tapping mentioned ten employees from prosecutor’s office. The least significant in his status among them was a special investigator. No procedural decisions were made about the mentioned persons and no checking of their activities was done. According to information by Moscow Region Department for Fighting Against Organized Crime, the total amount of bribes given so that Tri Kita case was dismissed was $2,000,000. 

Examination of the role by FSB officers in the Tri Kita case did not implicate any procedural decisions. It only intensified struggle inside the agency and caused a conflict between FSB and the head of Drugs Traffic Control Viktor Cherkesov who had managed to do that his people were responsible for operative cover of the investigation. As a result, a few FSB generals were made to resign while the Cherkesov’s right hand, General Bulbov, was accused of illegal tapping and got arrested.  

Under conditions of fierce conflicting by different groups of enforcers, the investigation of the case in question is also complicated with the fact that each of the hostile camps is trying to use the Tri Kita case to one’s own advantage and for getting squared with opponents. It’s impossible to speak about objectivity here. The case has proved to be an incurable virus for the Russian law enforcing system, the virus that has affected every structure that came to deal with it.  

P.S. General volume of bribing in the Tri Kita case is several times as big as the damage to the state that is mentioned in the court today.