Courier and customs officer told about the killers of Daria Dugina

They explained how Natalia Vovk and Bohdan Tsyganenko acted

On Tuesday, the Proletarsky District Court of Tula resumed hearings on a case indirectly related to the murder of political scientist Daria Dugina. At the trial, they told in detail how exactly the fake documents for the Mini Cooper car, which was used by Natalia Vovk, a citizen of Ukraine suspected of murder, were made.

According to the MK reporter from the courtroom, the senior lieutenant of the customs service, customs inspector Ekaterina Danilova testified at the trial. It was she who, in August 2022, when Dugin died, released cars through the Shumilkino checkpoint on the Russian-Estonian border.

Danilova recalled that on August 21, a silver Mini Cooper drove into the post around noon. Driver Natalya Vovk filed Ukrainian documents. Danilova had to find out if the driver needed to declare something. She took the documents, passport and registration certificate, registered the car in the vehicle log. Then the car was inspected. Neither the woman nor her passenger, a teenage daughter, raised any suspicions with the customs officer. Danilova noted that they do not additionally check the authenticity of documents. The lawyers of the accused (we recall that there are manufacturers of forged documents in the dock) immediately noticed that if Danilov doubted the authenticity of the documents, then it was necessary to notify the authorities, as well as inform the system department in risk management and the department of search for individuals and vehicles.

At the request of the prosecutor, the protocols for viewing the video recordings were read out. They clearly show how Vovk’s car is being examined, how a girl with a cat gets out of the car. The files also show how Danilova makes entries about a car driven by Vovk and then returns the documents.

Then the wife of one of the accused, Andrey Kuznetsov, from Tula, was interrogated. She said that her husband is engaged in design, described him as caring and attentive. The witness admitted that she knew about Kuznetsov’s business – the production of false documents using Photoshop. The defendant received orders by mail, provided false data and always wore a mask over his face. The wife was against this business and repeatedly threatened with divorce, but there was no talk of helping her husband. The fact that her husband was making documents for the car of the murderer Dugina, she realized after watching the news. In addition, Kuznetsov received a telegram warning about this.

At the same time, the lawyer emphasized that Kuznetsov did not know what the document would be used for, since he did not communicate with the customer. The second lawyer noticed that the document was used to leave Vovk when Dugina was already dead, so it is wrong to say that the document was used for the murder. However, the prosecutor retorted: there is no mention of murder in the accusation. The lawyer said that it was more said for the media.

A courier driver who delivered a letter with documents to Vovk was also interrogated. His story did not contain unusual details – except that the man who was supposed to pick up the documents did not answer the phone the first time. He himself called back, apologized and said that his car was broken into and his mobile phone was stolen. Since the courier was no longer going to take the envelope, the man offered to hand over valuable documents at the entrance to the round-the-clock mail center, where he would come himself. And so it was done. The man (this was the second suspect in the murder of Bogdan Tsyganenko) arrived at the center by taxi, took the parcel and left.