Convicted for the murder of Kalmanovich will appeal against the harsh sentence: “There is no motive and customer”

According to lawyers, the charge is based only on phone billing.

The verdict ended on Tuesday at the Moscow City Court in the case of the murder of a well-known businessman and philanthropist Shabtai Kalmanovich, which had been dragging on since November last year, almost 13 years ago.

Three key figures: Bagautdin Kostoev received 22 years in a strict regime colony, who, according to the verdict, shot Kalmanovich, 20 years – Ali Belkhoroev, who drove him in a car, and 18 years – Batyr Tumgoev, who secured the killer in another car. If the prosecutor’s wish had come true, then there would have been only two of these figures, since the prosecution requested a life sentence for Kostoev.

But ahead – not only all possible stages of appeal, but also the inevitable long gossip. In this high-profile case, there are many “bright” details and moments that raise questions, especially for a simple layman.

The victim of the crime was a figure much brighter and “colorful” than her killers and whoever was behind them. 61 years of life of Shabtai Kalmanovich, a native of the Jewish community of Kaunas, contained a sea of ​​events, including more than 20 years of life in Israel, where he was convicted of spying for the USSR and returned after 5.5 years already to a new country – Russia, and a successful pharmaceutical business, and a generous patronage of basketball. The philanthropist favored both the Lithuanian “Zalgiris” and the Urals basketball, and supported his favorite women’s team, based in the city of Vidnoe near Moscow. Among other things, it was Kalmanovich who first discovered the body of the ex-mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak in a Kaliningrad hotel.

This eventful life ended on November 2, 2009. That day, Kalmanovich was on his way to the Kremlin to meet with a member of the presidential administration. However, at the turn from Smolenskaya Embankment to Novy Arbat, a modest Lada Priora stopped at the crossroads next to his Mercedes, from which the businessman was shot point-blank. The driver of Kalmanovich, Pyotr Tumanov, despite being wounded in the lung, was about to start chasing, but lost control and crashed into a pole, while the driver of the Lada fled.

Only almost ten years later, the investigation brought Kostoev, Belkhoroev and Tumgoev to the public. At some point, the motive for the murder was revenge for the fact that Kalmanovich declared war on the halal Ingush slaughterhouses located near the sports base of his women’s basketball club. But later this topic somehow withered – and the defense in court repeatedly emphasized: but there is no motive! The lawyers also angrily reproached the investigation and the accusation of using unhealthy national passions: they say, every now and then they remind you that all the suspects are Ingush, and Belkhoroev is a descendant of the founder of the Batalkhadzhi sect, about which the Moscow public does not really know anything. The defenders were generally perplexed: what, they say, could unite the construction worker Kostoev, who earned his bread with his hump in the outback near St. Petersburg, the Moscow restaurateur Tumgoev and the rich son of the Kolyma gold mines Belkhoroev! True, it turned out that all three had previous convictions, moreover, Kostoev was already in jail for robbery at the time of his prosecution in the Kalmanovich case, Belkhoroev had a suspended sentence for robbery, and Tumgoev for extortion, reclassified as arbitrariness.

But the main detail: the prosecution was completely based on the billing of telephone conversations of all three defendants on the day of the murder and the previous weeks. It was from there that the investigation deduced a diagram of how they followed Kalmanovich in order to deal with him. Moreover, the lawyers claimed that this billing was forged! However, the court did not heed this argument. And against the dry electronic matter, even the furious speech of the lawyer Murad Musaev, which took nine hours, turned out to be powerless! The fact is that Judge Elena Pospelova kept interrupting Musaev, pointing out details that were unnecessary for the ears of the jury, which gave the defender a reason to exclaim: they say, I spoke for four hours, and they didn’t let me speak for five hours! All Musaev’s attempts turned out to be useless (his services were refused at the very end of the process), just as it was not possible to prove the alibi of Kostoev, who stated that on the day of the crime he was in mourning in his native Ingushetia for another businessman and philanthropist, also killed.

The jury considered the billing sufficient evidence, did not heed the rhetoric, and on July 13 found all three guilty. Then it was necessary to set the deadlines, which the judge announced on Tuesday.

Tumgoev’s lawyer, Ruslan Khasanov, told the MK correspondent that, in his opinion, there was “absolutely no” evidence of the guilt of the convicts, that the billing was “fake”, and the accusation was based “on emotional grounds”, trying in every possible way to “denigrate the place of birth” of the defendants. “There is no motive, no customer, no organizer!” – the defender emphasized and expressed the hope that in the process of appeal they would return to the Moscow City Court.