The Case of Ilya Farber

Moscow artist Ilya Farber arrived with his family in the Moshenka village of the Ostashkovsky district of the Tver region in the summer of 2010. He got a job as a teacher of drawing, literature and music in a rural school, organized concerts and festivals in the House of Culture. In 2011, he was appointed director of the aforementioned DC.

In 2011, the head of the village administration, Lyubov Valeeva, asked Ilya Farber to help with the repairs that took place at that time in the Moshensky Palace of Culture. This repair was the cause of the subsequent lawsuit.

According to Ilya Farber, the repair was practically not progressing, and the contractor referred to financial difficulties. According to Farber’s version, he periodically lent money to the contractor to continue construction, and also bought building materials with his own money. According to Farber, the contractor promised to return this money to Farber after completion of work, drawing up an act on their acceptance and receipt of payment (2.5 million rubles) from the state budget. ^{[6] [7]}

According to the prosecution, in July - August 2011, Ilya Farber received 300 thousand rubles from the subcontractor Yuri Gorokhov , the head of the Gorstroy-1 company performing repairs in the recreation center, and in September of the same year he demanded another 132 thousand rubles from him, for signing Act on successful completion of work.

Yuri Gorokhov wrote a statement about extortion, and after the act was signed, Farber was detained by officers of the Tver UFSB in Gorstroy’s office.

Farber's lawyer Elena Romanova, in the program “Complete Albats” (08/05/2013 20:10) on “Echo of Moscow”, stated that the act was not presented in court as evidence.

According to the prosecution, repair work in the recreation center was not carried out in full, and by signing the said act, Ilya Farber caused damage to the budget by 941 thousand rubles.

According to the defense, during the repair it turned out that the contract was expired, and the estimates were overvalued 3 times.

Ilya Farber decided to sue the general director of Gorstroy-1 Yuri Gorokhov. Then, an agreement was reached between Farber and Gorokhov that Gorstroy-1 would finish work on time. Nevertheless, Farber had to carry out part of the work himself, hire people for his money, buy building materials, and borrow. Yuri Gorokhov promised to reimburse expenses, but did not give receipts.

In September 2011, Ilya Farber came to Gorokhov's office to get a debt, where he was arrested. He was placed in the pre-trial detention center of Tver .

No case was opened on Yuri Gorokhov himself, although an examination appointed by the investigator revealed that Gorstroy-1 had not completed repairs under the contract for at least 1 million rubles. A few months later, according to the same Gorokhov, Ilya Farber was again charged with receiving a bribe in the amount of 300,000 rubles.

The trial in the case of Ilya Farber began on June 9, 2012. The charge required 9 years in a maximum security colony and a fine of 3.2 million rubles (the damage caused by Farber to the budget of the Palace of Culture was estimated at 941 thousand rubles).

According to the editorial board of Novaya Gazeta, with reference to Farber himself, the court session was held with numerous violations: the defendant was not allowed into the courtroom, the number of jurors during the meeting was reduced from 12 to 8, judge Vladimir Andreev, in a parting word to the jury, advised them “not to pay attention to words of the defendant, ”went into the hall at the time of writing the verdict. ^[five]

The alleged statements of the public prosecutor Pavel Vereshchagin were replicated: in his opinion, the offenses committed by Farber represented “a special danger”, “this is a corruption case”, and “Farber thereby questioned and undermined the authority of the authorities”.

According to Farber, during the trial the prosecutor allegedly stated that “according to the crunch of banknotes” on the dictaphone record presented by Gorokhov, you can set the amount of the bribe that the defendant was charged with: “30 crunches of banknotes of five thousand each” ^[5] . Moreover, back in September 2012, the press published audio recordings of negotiations between Ilya Farber and Yuri Gorokhov, used at trial as material evidence; on films, Farber directly discussed the receipt of kickbacks and bribes. ^[eight]

The court did not take into account the presence of extenuating circumstances - the state of health of the defendant (spinal injury), as well as the presence of young children. Farber has two minor children, at the time of sentencing they were 7 and 1.5 years old. Farber's third son, 19-year-old Peter, was called as a witness in his father's case; In an interview with a journalist for the Novaya Gazeta , he said that he had been threatened and beaten until he lost consciousness by the FSB Directorate of Tver ^[6] .

On August 10, 2012, the Tver Regional Court, on the basis of a jury verdict, sentenced Ilya Farber to 8 years in a maximum security penal colony and a fine of 3.2 million rubles.

On November 30, 2012, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation overturned the sentence to Ilya Farber, sending the case for review to the Tver Regional Court.

On February 11, 2013, the Tver Regional Court decided to return the criminal case against Ilya Farber to the prosecutor’s office in order to remove obstacles to court consideration, and also to extend the term of the accused in custody by two months. The appeal of attorney Ilya Farber about changing the preventive measure to non-custodial was dismissed by the court.

Then the case was heard in the Ostashkovsky city court of the Tver region. On July 26, 2013, a debate took place between the parties. On August 1, 2013, the Ostashkovsky city court of the Tver region sentenced Ilya Farber to 7 years and 1 month in a maximum security penal colony, and also ordered Farber to pay a fine of 3.1 million rubles. ^{[9] [10] [11]}

Ilya Farber:

Gorokhov, on the basis of whose testimony they accused me, was first a victim, and when the investigation figured out that I had not extorted money from him, that Gorokhov had slandered me, the charge of extorting a bribe was dropped from me, and the status of the victim was removed from Gorokhov. And no other status was assigned to him, he did not give evidence anymore. But for some reason the investigator compiled the indictment on the basis of the testimony of Gorokhov as a witness. But apart from Gorokhov’s testimony, there is nothing more that would indicate that I had committed a crime in the case file. There is not even indirect evidence in the case ^[12] .

On August 10, 2013, Ilya Farber's lawyer, Elena Romanova, appealed the verdict. The appeal was filed in the Tver Regional Court. Farber’s defense claims that he signed another document, but did not sign the act of completion at all ^[13] .

In December, the prison term was reduced to 3 years. ^[14]

The President of the Russian Jewish Congress, Yuri Kanner, draws attention to the fact that the clearly anti-Semitic statement of the state prosecutor “Can a person by the name of Farber help the village for free?” Was ignored by judge Andreev. ^[7]

Journalist and former secretary of the Union of Journalists of Russia Igor Yakovenko believes that “Farber’s case in its explosive social potential is on a par with lawsuits that changed the mentality of peoples and entire continents,” comparing it with the Dreyfus case in France at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries . and the Beilis case in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. According to Yakovenko, the reaction to Farber’s case and the ability to influence this case is a moral test for Russian society ^[15] .

On August 6, 2013, an action in support of Ilya Farber was held in Moscow. The picket was organized by journalist and photographer Victoria Ivleva ^[16] .

Journalist Irina Finyakina, comparing the sentences, notes that the former head of the property relations department of the Russian Ministry of Defense , a member of the Board of Directors of Oboronservis OJSC Evgenia Vasilyeva accused of embezzlement of shares of 31 State Design Institute for Special Construction OJSC in the amount of more than 190 million rubles, is under house arrest; against this background, the sentence to Farber looks “wild” and the journalist has “no doubt that the court fulfilled someone’s order” ^[4] , although it is unclear “what kind of madman needed a modest drawing teacher, not an oppositionist, not a politician, not a state destroyer foundations? "

On December 31, 2013, the Moscow District Court of Tver granted the request of Ilya Farber on parole ^[17] . January 10, 2014 Ilya Farber was released in accordance with a court decision ^[18] .

After the former prisoner left the premises of the Tver pre-trial detention center, his son Pyotr met a large number of stars from the bag on the ground, which were used as insignia on the epaulettes of employees of Russian law enforcement agencies. Ilya Farber symbolically trampled these stars with their feet. Present to reporters Ilya Farber said:

I thought you would guess. These are stars from the pursuit of prosecutors and investigators, because of which many here are sitting illegally. And including me. The fact that these stars destroy families, make fun of people, must be put to an end. ^[nineteen]

" Rossiyskaya Gazeta " condemned the actions of the released, describing them as an outrageous trick ^[20] .

• RBC daily, 08/11/2012, "The rural teacher Ilya Farber, who exposed the construction fraud, received 8 years"
• Forbes.ru, “I want the state in the basic configuration”
• “The Crunch of Banknotes“ did not mislead the Supreme Court ”, Vera Chelishcheva, 11/30/2012, Novaya Gazeta
• vesti.ru, “Scandal in the village of Moshenka: the first victory of Ilya Farber”, Dina Ivanova, 02/02/2012
• newsru.com, “A teacher from the Tver region Ilya Farber received eight years of strict regime in a case fabricated by his debtor,” August 10, 2012
• tverigrad.ru, “The rural teacher Ilya Farber will remain in custody”, Tatyana Pavlova, 03/01/13
• “For what, in fact, the rural teacher Ilya Farber got eight years,” Alexey Duel, kp.ru, August 24, 2012
• Full Albats - air of the program on the Echo of Moscow, dedicated to the case of Farber