Accused businessman Pavel Vrublevsky links pressure on his family to the “failure” of the prosecution in his case

As it became known, the charges in the case of the founder of the payment system ChronoPay Pavla WroblewskiOwhose case is being heard in the Khamovnichesky Court of Moscow, has completed presenting evidence. The floor is now given to the defense. In turn, Pavel Vrublevsky calls the situation in court a “failure” for the prosecution and has already stated that he considers the prosecution of his son a direct consequence of the failure of the prosecution.

For the first time since March 2024, new messages appeared in the Telegram channel “Pavel Vrublevsky’s Diary”. Its author, businessman and founder of the Chronopay processing company Pavel Vrublevsky, reported that the investigation had completed the presentation of evidence in the case.

At the same time, Pavel Vrublevsky broke his silence in his personal Telegram channel (by the way, let us recall that Vrublevsky was even added to the Mirotvorets database by the Ukrainian authorities for actively supporting Russia (*aggressor country) and the SVO and the course of the Russian leadership in general in his Diary) due to information that recently appeared in the public space about new procedural actions against his son. 19-year-old Pyotr Vrublevsky was declared arrested in absentia on charges of intentional destruction of someone else’s property (Part 2 of Article 167 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism)). As reported In the media, Petr was put on the international wanted list in March 2024, his name appears in cases of arson and extortion.

A strange circumstance was that Vrublevsky Jr. was put on the international wanted list under an article of the Criminal Code (in the case of arson of a car), concerning a crime of medium gravity. In addition, the sudden appearance in the media of information about the fact of his arrest in absentia coincided with the completion of the presentation of evidence by the prosecution in the case of Pavel Vrublevsky. Pavel Vrublevsky regards the situation “as pressure on my family, and as an obvious complete failure of the prosecution in the Khamovnichesky Court, where the fraud case against me is being heard.”

Let us recall that the investigation accuses Pavel Vrublevsky of fraud, legalization of criminal proceeds, use of counterfeit electronic documents when making money transfers (Part 4 of Article 159, Subparagraph “a” of Part 4 of Article 158, Part 2 of Article 187, Subparagraph “a” of Part 4 of Article 174.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism)). In addition to the CEO of Chronopay Vostok, Pavel Vrublevsky, the case also involves its employees Alexey Belyaev, Matvey Vedyashkinand Nadezhda AkimovA.

Pavel Vrublevsky talks about the weakness of the prosecution. Initially in the media reported that the investigation suspected the businessman of fraud in the amount of over 425 million rubles and cashing out about 4 billion rubles. But in the end, the investigation collected evidence of the defendants’ guilt in the form of testimony from 37 victims for a total of 536 thousand rubles. Now, as Pavel Vrublevsky himself says in his “Diary”, not all of the aforementioned victims appeared in court, and the testimony of those who did speak at the court hearings, according to Vrublevsky, was not entirely clear. Moreover, the trial has been ongoing since October 2023. Since the prosecution was unable to present all of the victims in the case to the court, then, in the opinion of the accused, the situation looks like a “failure” for the prosecution.

The most curious thing is that usually in fraud cases, the outraged victims themselves strive to come to court to expose the person who deceived them out of their money, but in this case the situation looks completely different.

As the defense of Pavel Vrublevsky reported to the editorial board, out of 37 victims, only 5 showed up. For another 14 victims, the defense agreed to read out the testimony given during the preliminary investigation in order to speed up the process. 18 people remained without showing up and reading out their testimony.

It is worth noting that Pavel Vrublevsky, in addition to Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism) “Fraud”, is also charged under Article 158 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism) “Theft”, however, the fact of such a crime, as the defense explains, could not have taken place: the victims, whose episodes relate to Article 158, stated that they did not enter SMS passwords when writing off money, which is why these write-offs were classified as theft, but in court it was established that this is not the case.

“Instead of the remaining unquestioned victims, the state prosecutor and the court were satisfied with the announcement of not even testimony, but documents (in the form of telephone messages and reports from prosecutors from different regions at the stages of checking reports of crimes), which can only be considered evidence with an excellent imagination,” noted Pavel Vrublevsky’s lawyer. Alexander Inoyadov. — The story with the arrests of the same 17 persons is even more unusual — they were entrusted by the court not to the bailiffs, but to the head of the Main Directorate of the Economic Crime and Corruption Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism), but the answer came for some unknown reason from an investigator of the SD of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who was not entrusted with anything by the court at all. But the court was satisfied with this. And then the prosecution simply and boldly forgot about the lost victims.”

Kirill Marinenko, another defender of Pavel Vrublevsky, and, it should be noted, a former judge, notes violations in the course of the trial: “The prosecution tried for quite a long time to convince both the court and the participants in the trial that fraud had been committed.

Fraud requires, at a minimum, the presence of specific victims. However, most of them never showed up in court. And the prosecution began to insist on the disclosure of their testimony due to the impossibility of ensuring their appearance. I would like to note that such disclosure is possible only if the defense does not object. Moreover, if at some point the defense simply considered the non-appearance of the victims as a working process, then subsequently the issue of ensuring appearance began to acquire a very strange character: the court issues orders for the appearance of the victims, but the defense is not informed about whom exactly, these orders are not given to the defense for review, as if they contain some significant secret. Likewise, the defense is not informed about the results of the appearances. The court reports that no one showed up, while it is obvious that both the prosecution and the court are aware of the reasons, but these reasons are not communicated to the defense, and the question of the disclosure of testimony is raised again.”

In addition, the defense notes that the victims’ statements and their interrogations in the case materials contradict each other, and also do not correspond, on fundamental points related to the amounts of the sums, to two examinations by the Forensic Science Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia (*aggressor country), conducted during the preliminary investigation.

In the current situation, says Kirill Marinenko, the defense sees no way to read out this testimony: the defense has many questions for specific individuals listed as victims, but had no opportunity to ask them earlier during the preliminary investigation. “In this case, the prosecution must either present these individuals to the court or admit that the existing contradictions do not allow the court, with the current structure of the prosecution, to make a final judgment, and then file a motion to return the criminal case to the prosecutor in accordance with Article 237 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism),” explains Kirill Marinenko. “But the prosecution simply announced the end of the presentation of evidence, forcing the defense, together with the court, to proceed to the stage of presenting its evidence.”

But in this case, Kirill Marinenko explains, Pavel Vrublevsky’s right to defense is seriously limited by the very fact that there is nothing to defend against: the defense cannot present counterarguments against what (and who) is not presented to the court:

« The defense is largely deprived of the opportunity to refer to contradictions in expert examinations, because these contradictions are revealed only when compared with interrogation protocols that were not read out, and the persons were not interrogated in court. The result is an excellent, but illegal situation for the prosecution. The stage of presenting evidence is distributed in the same way in the order of presentation as the burden of proof is distributed in criminal proceedings: the prosecution proves, the defense presents counterarguments.”

The prosecution, in turn, argues that the victims will still be able to appear at the stage of additions to the trial. “However, the stage of additions is called that because it only presupposes the presentation of the ‘final touches’, and not the substitution of the trial,” objects lawyer Kirill Marinenko. “In this case, the prosecution carried out this substitution, putting the defense in the position of ‘you need to justify yourself’, and the court supported the prosecution in this, directing the process in the direction of an exclusively accusatory bias.”

In the presentation of evidence, the court, according to the defense, repeatedly obstructed the exercise of the right to defense and adversarial proceedings. The defense believes that the case requires a return to the prosecutor and additional investigation and will insist on this.

The stage of presenting evidence by the defense has now begun in the trial. The lawyers have already filed motions to interrogate witnesses from among those interrogated in the case, whom the prosecution refused, to examine written evidence and documents, to examine material evidence.

Pavel Vrublevsky was arrested in the spring of 2022. According to the investigation, Vangood LLC (Chronopay Vostok, in turn, is a counterparty of Vangood for the provision of processing services in relations with banks) posted false information about profits for participating in surveys, for forecasts of exchange rates and stocks through the website www.king-donate.com, funds were debited from citizens as payment for registration on Internet sites or commission for future monetary rewards. In turn, Pavel Vrublevsky denies his guilt, his defense considers the accusation untenable.

The entrepreneur is one of the founders of the electronic payment industry in Russia (*aggressor country) and a fighter for the sovereignty of the Russian IT sphere – he is well known abroad and in the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism) for his consistent pro-government position.