The Tushinsky Court of Moscow has begun hearings on the case of a criminal community that, for several years, was secretly exporting the plant of JSC MMP im. Chernyshev" parts from military aircraft. The damage is estimated at 17.7 million rubles. As it turned out, the investigation began in 2019, when the FSB detained an ex-military man who acted as an intermediary in the resale of parts - he made a deal with the investigation and opened an illegal channel.

Theft at the plant

On February 15, the Tushinsky Court of Moscow began hearings on the case of the theft by members of a criminal group from the Moscow machine-building enterprise named after V.V. Chernyshev for military details. The plant, subordinated to the Russian corporation Rostec, specializes in high-precision manufacturing of engines for aircraft and helicopters.

As follows from the materials of the criminal case, which I have read, nine former employees of the plant and another defendant have been charged. Depending on their role, they are accused of creating and participating in a criminal community (Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and theft (Article 158 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

According to the FSB, from the enterprise in the period from June 2017 to June 2019

Community members stole several hundred parts: turbine blade sectors, bushings, fuel lines, levers, plugs, receivers, and more.

To whom all these details were sold is not clear, the prosecution is silent about this.

The lawyer of the plant, Alexander Baranov, said that the company filed a civil lawsuit against the accused for compensation for the damage caused by JSC “MMP them. Chernyshev" damage for 17.7 million rubles.

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How the criminal community worked

The leader and creator of the FSB organized crime group is Aleksey Paponov, an ex-silovik and former employee of the administrative corps, where the main management of the plant is located (employees call it the "White House"). Moreover, Paponov created the criminal community even before he received a leadership position, the investigation claims.

“At an unspecified time, but not earlier than 2015 and not later than June 2017, in an unspecified place and under unspecified circumstances, Paponov, head of the mechanical assembly complex of JSC “MMP them. Chernyshev, whose duties included the general management of the production, testing and repair of aviation equipment, received an offer from Andrey Sergeechev, who is not an employee of the enterprise, to regularly and for a fee jointly sell parts and assembly units that are not freely available for RD-33 aircraft engines installed on MiG-29 combat aircraft,” reads the indictment, which was announced in court on Monday by prosecutor Daria Alenkova.

Sergeechev is the only one who was a member of the criminal community and was not directly related to the plant, but played one of the main roles in the case.

According to information, he worked at the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Tushino Machine-Building Design Bureau" Soyuz "as a repair engineer with a monthly salary of 50 thousand rubles. The Soyuz bureau is a developer of hypersonic systems and aircraft engines and previously received significant funding from the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Many employees of MMP im. Chernyshov”, and someone even worked at two rates (both there), an employee of the plant told the publication. Subsequently, funding stopped, employees stopped paying salaries. Now Soyuz is at the stage of liquidation, and Sergeyechev last year sued the bureau for unpaid wages in the amount of about 300 thousand rubles.

The prosecution describes the hierarchy of the OPS as follows: Paponov carried out the main leadership of the group, in which he attracted the head of the bureau in the information technology department of the enterprise, Natalya Turishcheva. She looked for details that could be stolen and hid them from accounting, attracted and coordinated the actions of an employee of the workshop, Olga Ulanovskaya, who directly stole the details, and then handed them over to Vladimir Semenov, head of the section of the mechanical stamping complex. Semyonov kept the parts in the warehouse of the plant, and at the right time handed them over to the regular driver Alexander Polyakov. The group also included a specialist of the mechanical assembly complex Andrey Borisov.

In addition, "wishing to increase the volume of criminal activity," Paponov attracted the head of the production and dispatching bureau, Stanislav Sizov, and his deputy, Sergei Entin. They also stole parts and handed them over to the driver.

Then the driver, Polyakov, in a service Gazelle equipped with a hiding place, took out the parts from the factory and handed them over to Sergeechev for further sale. The latter had an accomplice during the sale - a mechanic of the mechanical assembly complex at the Chernyshev plant Valery Gaprindashvili. He stored, transported and handed over parts to customers, receiving money for them.

Guilty, but not in everything

At the trial, Paponov pleaded partially guilty, pointing out that his guilt during the preliminary investigation “has not been proven, the accusation is based on conjectures, assumptions, conjectures. An organized group has not been proven, just as a criminal community has not been proven.”

Sizov, Entin, Gaprindashvili also partially admitted guilt. Sergeechev, Semyonov and Borisov fully admitted their guilt. Turishcheva and Ulanovskaya refrained from expressing their position on the charges. Only the driver Polyakov did not plead guilty.

Paponov is the only one of the accused who is being held in a pre-trial detention center. His lawyers refused to talk to him.

The rest of the defendants are either under house arrest or under house arrest.

H4 everyone passed the pensioner / h4 Moscow Machine-Building Enterprise named after V.V. Chernysheva calls himself a recognized leader of the Russian aviation industry. At the same time, cases of theft from them were recorded before - according to the lawyer of the plant, Alexander Baranov, at least three such criminal cases were initiated.

Basically, they stole the turbine blades of the MiG-29 engine. These Russian fighters, in addition to the Russian army, are in service abroad - with the CIS countries, as well as India, Iran, Cuba, Ukraine and others.

“Including the Warsaw Pact countries, they operate these MiGs, but due to the political situation they cannot buy them, so they have to take a roundabout way [purchase components] ... Germany, Poland, Ukraine - they all fly these MiGs,” Baranov explained .

However, there were no cases of creating a criminal community before. FSB officers identified the OPS in 2019. Judging by the data of the criminal case, it took two years for the investigation to uncover the entire network - the detentions began in the summer of 2021 and ended in the fall.

The FSB managed to get to the group from the Chernyshev plant through a whole chain of intermediaries involved in the purchase and resale of military aircraft components. Gunner on the channel for the supply of parts from the "MMP them. Chernysheva,” a retired military man, pensioner Anatoly Yaropolov, who was already acting under the control of the security forces, who had been detained by the FSB officers shortly before that, in June 2019, spoke. Subsequently, he agreed to cooperate and, as part of the deal, acted under the control of the Directorate "P" of the SEB of the FSB of Russia and the FSB for Moscow and the region.

Yaropolov was the chief engineer of Vector APT LLC, as well as an individual entrepreneur. As an individual entrepreneur, he indicated different types of work: from the production of furniture to the repair and maintenance of aircraft, including space ones, follows from the register of legal entities. Vector APT is also engaged in the repair of equipment and aircraft, the company has the rights to the invention of the Gas Turbine Power Plant, which previously belonged to TMKB Soyuz.

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Junk and scrap metal

At the time of his arrest, Yaropolov tried to acquire 32 shovels intended for smuggling to Ukraine in the interests of a certain citizen and resident of Ukraine, Pavel Melezhko. This follows from the studied materials of the court. It also says that the man who sold the blades was himself under investigation by the FSB by that time.

In addition to the OPS behind the Chernyshev plant, Yaropolov told the investigation about a citizen of Ukraine, Sergei Liventsov, whom he met through Melezhko and who turned to him about buying components for a military aircraft engine. In October 2019, Liventsov came to the building of the Russian Academy of Sciences on Leninsky Prospekt for a meeting scheduled by Yaropolov in order to purchase three sectors of the high-pressure turbine nozzle blades for $8.1 thousand. The FSB officers took these sectors at the plant. Chernyshev.

Liventsov, an electrician by profession, came to Russia to work, including working at construction sites. At the meeting, where he was eventually detained, he managed to tell the pensioner that the

Three segments of high-pressure turbine nozzle blades fitted to MiG-29 aircraft engines will be sold to Dubai, where it already has an order for a landing gear, presumably for a Su-series military aircraft.

According to the investigators, Liventsov was a member of a “formed group of persons”, in which he was assigned the role of a “purchaser of components” for the RD-33 aircraft engine. In addition, he repeatedly crossed the border between Kazakhstan and Ukraine, and investigators found correspondence with potential suppliers of components in his phone. Last April, Liventsov was sentenced to three years in prison for attempting to smuggle turbine blades from a MIG-29 engine from Russia to the UAE.

Liventsov denied the accusation of preparing to smuggle components to Dubai (UAE). According to him, which are given in the materials of the court studied by the publication, the Ukrainian had to hand over the components for the aircraft to a customer named Vladimir, for whom he worked as a courier, and the version about moving the products “to hot countries” was proposed by Vladimir in order to calm Yaropolov, who was afraid that the details will remain in Russia.The FSB checked Liventsov's email. It turned out that he sent letters with a request to help find aviation products to the address “avia***@yandex.ru” - it was used by Vladimir V. (the surname is known to the editors). This mailbox, as I learned, was previously listed among the contacts of an aircraft parts store involved in the sale of aircraft parts. A number of strategic state-owned enterprises are listed as clients of this store-warehouse, including those controlled by Rostec and located in Samara.

Vladimir V. confirmed that he had been interrogated in connection with the case, but he and Liventsov had “nothing illegal”. He met him "accidentally", and Liventsov bought from him only "heating elements from decommissioned tail rotor blades." According to Vladimir V., there are some “puppeteers” in the Liventsov case, and he was “surrendered by his own”.

The entrepreneur called the blades that the Ukrainian allegedly tried to buy "junk and scrap metal" because they are of no value without a certificate and documents.

Indirectly, this is confirmed by the words of the plant's lawyer Baranov, who said that the parts returned to the enterprise by law enforcement officers are "dead weight" and nothing can be done with them.

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