Witnesses for the prosecution in the case of changing the stadium in Tula do not consider the rent as a loss

Another court session

Today, September 5, in Tula, in the Sovetsky District Court, a regular hearing was held in a criminal case against the deputy chairman of the Committee for Property and Land Relations of the city administration, Tatyana Silaeva. She is accused of abuse of power, which led to significant damage to the MCP “Tulgorelektrotrans”.

As part of today’s meeting, Igumnova Svetlana, the chief accountant of the MCP Tulgorelectrotrans, who has held this post since February 2020, testified. According to her, the enterprise is planned and unprofitable, and losses are compensated through subsidies provided by the administration of the city of Tula. The property of the PCR, according to Igumnova, is in operational management, is reflected in the balance sheet of the enterprise on the basis of the relevant order of the Committee for Property and Land Relations.

Svetlana Igumnova explained that she personally did not touch the exchange agreement, the details became known to her only when she was preparing for the lawsuit that had begun. She only knows that after the deal, the MCP was forced to rent a site to accommodate the bus fleet. At the moment, according to Igumnova, the amount of rent is 2.5 million rubles a month, and initially the contract was for 100 thousand rubles. The chief accountant said that the financial and economic activity plan of the MCP included rent payments as an expense item.

According to the witness, the lease payments did not change the structure of the company’s balance sheet. Cash gaps, as Svetlana Igumnova pointed out, are constantly present at the PCR, they are covered by the subsidies mentioned above. Also, lease payments did not affect the activities of the organization. The witness called these amounts costs, not losses.

The prosecutor drew the attention of the court to the differences between today’s testimony and the information that Svetlana told the court in 2020. So, earlier she claimed that the costs after the conclusion of the lease increased. Thus, from the testimony of two years ago, it followed that the conclusion of the lease agreement worsened the property situation of the MCP “Tulgorelektrotrans”. Svetlana agreed with these testimonies, however, according to her, at that moment she still did not understand the affairs of the enterprise well enough.

We heard during the court session the testimony of the witness Natalya Berezhnaya, who from 2015 to 2017 held the position of chief accountant at the ITUC. According to her, she entered documents related to the barter agreement into the annual report.

Berezhnaya confirmed the words of the previous witness, saying that the barter agreement did not worsen the condition of the enterprise. On the contrary, over the next few years, there was a decrease in losses and, as a result, a decrease in the volume of subsidies from the administration. The expenses for the facility on Oboronnaya Street were very high, and we had to constantly pay fines for non-compliance of working conditions with established standards.

The prosecutor again saw a discrepancy in today’s testimony and the information that Natalya Berezhnaya told the court in 2020. So, earlier she pointed out that the enterprise suffered losses from the concluded exchange agreement, since, along with the maintenance of an unusable facility at Oboronnaya, it had to pay additional rent.

During today’s meeting, Berezhnaya turned to the terminology and explained that, in general, rental expenses can be considered losses, just like expenses, for example, for the maintenance of an object. Ultimately, she stated that the rent had no effect on “general losses”, although it was a waste.

Also, Valery Simakovich, the former head of the Tulgorelectrotrans MCP, was summoned to the trial as a witness, but at the last moment he could not appear in the process, as he was sent on an urgent business trip. At the end of the meeting, a decision was made to call the following witnesses.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for September 15.