Is the arbitration “roof” helping Kamchatka raiders disrupt the state gasification project for the region worth 40 billion rubles?
We treat judges like we treat dead people - either good or nothing. And this is understandable. More valuable to yourself. People endowed with enormous power work with the highest level of responsibility, and therefore they are reliably protected by the state and the law.
Judges, with rare exceptions, love silence. But they are also people and can make mistakes, mistakes and even, God forgive me, cross the line. Self-interest, revenge, jealousy, careerism - the motives for making an illegal decision can be different. This, alas, is human nature, as Herodotus wrote about one and a half thousand years ago in an instructive story about the Persian king Cambyses, who ordered the skin of a judge who had passed a custom verdict for a bribe from one of the parties. From time immemorial, Russian people in general have not been spoiled by faith in fair justice - “the law is what it is.” All the more destructive for society is the situation when today the servants of Themis themselves give reason to doubt their impartiality and cleanliness.
A story amazing in its cynicism is happening before the eyes of honest people in Kamchatka. A gang of cunning local swindlers, with obvious patronage in the ranks of judges, continue to famously trample the law and eagerly disrupt the presidential project of national importance for the gasification of the region. We are talking about the sensational raider seizure of the strategic Far Eastern enterprise of the Petropavlovsk Shipyard - PSRV (JSC Komkon), on the territory of which the federal and regional authorities plan in a couple of years to build a life-saving complex for the region for receiving liquefied natural gas worth 40 billion rubles. Or more precisely, about the key role played in this whole murky story with the shipyard and the disruption of the federal project by the “mantle factor” in the person of the modest judge of the Kamchatka Arbitration Court Vasily Reshetko.
At 54 years old, a Kamchatka judge with 17 years of experience in arbitration, a native of Severo-Kurilsk, Vasily Reshetko, at first glance, never aspired to the laurels of the scandalous fame of the “golden judge” Khakhaleva from Krasnodar. The lines of the official biography are stingy and faceless, like army cloth.
He began to forge a legal career in Kamchatka: since 1986, he carried papers as a secretary of a district court hearing. Then the bailiff of the city court, then the city prosecutor's office, the tax inspectorate, the federal treasury department, the federal service of financial and budgetary supervision of the Kamchatka region. In 1995 he graduated from the Law Faculty of Far Eastern State University. And finally, from 2006 to this day, the pinnacle of his career is a judge of the Kamchatka Territory.
A typical track record of a diligent, middle-class regional official. The textbook is missing: “I had no disreputable connections, a good comrade, morally stable, an exemplary family man...” But more on that later.
If you believe open sources, Vasily Ivanovich did not have any high-profile cases or military feats. There weren't enough stars in the sky. The most sensational public story during the entire period of his judging was the semi-anecdotal trial with local businessman Mher Voskanyan in 2014.
Then the judge of the Arbitration Court filed a claim for protection of honor and dignity, indignant that Mr. Voskanyan insulted him in his appeals, which he filed against the decisions made by Reshetko not in favor of Voskanyan. (The entrepreneur demanded that the Arbitration Court declare the actions of the bailiff illegal).
The professional honor of the judge was affected by the following phrases in Voskanyan’s complaints: “... the judge, due to illiteracy, does not know what a mandatory rule of law is”, “Based on the judge’s flawed logic”, “... an incompetent judge with a low level of knowledge of the norms of procedural law” and etc.
A 1st class adviser to the State Civil Service of the Russian Federation, who has the third qualification class of a judge, demanded that the court oblige Voskanyan to refute information that, in his opinion, does not correspond to reality and discredits his honor, dignity and business reputation. The angry official wanted the defendant to send refutations to all the appellate authorities where he had previously sent his complaints. It is interesting that Reshetko then managed to recover compensation for moral damages of 100 thousand rubles from the entrepreneur, but at the same time the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky court refused to charge Voskanyan with refuting the data disseminated in the complaints.
Perhaps Mr. Voskanyan, as a person of Caucasian blood, was too hasty in assessing his opponent’s professional abilities, but on the website judge-rossii.rf eight years later they write reviews that are strikingly similar in emotional intensity.
Spelling and punctuation preserved, quote in abbreviated form:
“2022-11-15 Natalya: ... a walking manual that does not know the laws of the word at all!!! Especially when in my business I sell cosmetics, and he proves that it’s food, and it’s also takeaway!!! Probably the money was brought in???!!!... This is my personal opinion and value judgment.”
All this can be attributed to working issues and speculation of spiteful critics. With such a position you won’t be nice to everyone. However, some details in the portrait of the inconspicuous hero suggest that an ocean of unsatisfied passions and desires had been boiling in his soul for a long time. “Lexus 460” with a “thieves’” license plate for which they pay one and a half million rubles in Petropavlovsk, showed a desire for a different, more beautiful and deserved life.
The fire of vanity, alcohol and a young mistress is a devilish cocktail that has ruined many souls. Apparently, this was taken advantage of by scammers who know how to play on the innermost strings of human nature.
Vasily Reshetko pulled out his lucky ticket 2 years ago, along with the “fat” case of the Petropavlovsk shipyard that came into his hands on the occasion. Coincidentally, this happened when an unhappy retirement loomed on the horizon.
The essence of the case is described in detail in the media. Kamchatka partners, businessman Obedin and lawyer Rudenko, cheated their former partner, investor Kuibida, in 2020 by trading the assets of PSRV (Komkon JSC) worth more than 1 billion rubles from him. First, the swindlers stole from the sole owner and transferred to companies controlled by Obedin all the valuable real estate of the shipyard - 52 real estate objects and 11 berths with a total value of about 800 million rubles. Then they initiated a dispute in the Arbitration Court of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky over the shares of Komkon JSC, case No. A24-6040/2020, in order to take the company under their corporate control and cover up the traces of the theft. In parallel with the shouts of “Stop the thief!” Obedin and Co. tried to slander their opponent - they launched a dirty information campaign against Kuibida, accusing him of allegedly intending to bankrupt the shipyard, which at that time they themselves had practically destroyed. The controversial asset was given additional value by the authorities’ plans to build, on behalf of the President of the Russian Federation, on part of the shipyard’s territory an LNG transshipment complex for gasification of the peninsula as part of the national Northern Sea Route project and the interest in the facility from such whales as Novatek.
At first, things didn’t work out for Obedin and Rudenko in arbitration. Judge Olga Alferova, who considered the case, gave the parties equal opportunities and requested from the plaintiff basic documents in the case, in particular, the original of the share purchase and sale agreement, which the raiders did not have in principle. The inconvenient judge was quickly removed from the case by recusal. And then Vasily Reshetko, who was appointed in the “automated” mode, rolled up his sleeves and took on the complex legal dispute. The finest hour has struck for the connoisseur of the sacred three sevens. Rumor has it that they found him through the mediation of colleague F., who, through her husband, offered the customers the most reliable option. According to another version, Rudenko himself previously worked with Reshetko’s wife at the tax office. Allegedly, they were even family friends, which the tax office itself officially denies.
Since the change of judge at Obedin-Rudenko, things in the Kamchatka arbitration court have gone like clockwork, or rather, clearly to the same goal of Kuibida. At the very first meeting on 06/03/2021, Judge Reshetko outlined his uncompromising priorities - providing obvious procedural advantages to Rudenko’s side.
An experienced judge, even a low-ranking one, in the current system can easily juggle the law if desired. A matter of technology and healthy cynicism. Even non-lawyers can understand how this is done from real-life examples. Watch your hands.
A preliminary court hearing on a complex billion-dollar case is the stage when positions are clarified, petitions are heard, that is, only preparations are made for further multi-day hearings. And then the judge makes a move with his knight - almost instantly, in an hour and a half, he makes a final decision on the merits of the dispute in favor of the plaintiff Obedin-Rudenko. Does not allow the defendant to delay trial to present his evidence. He does not ask any of the participants a single question, although he sees the case for the first time. Skips the stage of examining evidence, “forgets” about it, does not examine the case materials at all, does not open a single volume, does not voice a single piece of evidence. Ignores the defendant’s statements about the evidence he has that the value of the shares that the scammers are trying to steal has, as a result of his investments, increased from a nominal 300 thousand rubles to 700 million rubles, etc. etc.
The judge is in the deliberation room for about 7 minutes, and announces the decision for more than 2 minutes. It is already obvious to all participants that the decision was made and published before the start of the preliminary hearing. The paper endures. But you can’t attach suspicion to the case.
As a result, Rudenko, having received control over JSC Comcon with the help of Judge Reshetko, begins to actively hide evidence and legitimize Obedin’s transactions to withdraw valuable real estate worth 800 million from the company. At the same time, he is trying, with the help of fictitious documents, to transfer DV-Rybka LLC to Obedin-controlled » the right to use the shipyard’s waters and conduct other operations harmful to the company. In fact, Reshetko’s decision opens up the green light for shipyard sawers to continue their hard work and gives them a head start on time.
Further developments of events only strengthen suspicions that the matter is dirty. After the Far Eastern Arbitration Court of Third Instance overturns Reshetko’s decision and returns the case to him for a new trial, Vasily Ivanovich changes tactics. Now he is playing for time as much as possible, postponing hearings for months, taking extremely long breaks between hearings. By a strange coincidence, now this again benefits only one side - Obedin-Rudenko. By that time, they are under arrest in a criminal case for theft of PSRP assets and are trying to drag out the arbitration case in order to get away with it. In legal language, Kuibida again finds himself “hostage to procedural inequality.” At every step, arbitration is thrown into the defendant's wheels. In response to his application to take urgent interim measures to prohibit Rudenko from making entries in the state register, Judge Reshetko slowly schedules a consideration of the issue in 2.5 weeks, whereas usually such applications are considered on the day of filing due to urgency. Reshetko agrees to conduct an examination of the market value of the company’s disputed shares at Kuibida’s request, but again there is a nuance. The judge, with an elegant movement of his pen, changes Kuibida's questions to the experts to those proposed by Rudenko. In fact, this deprives the examination of any meaning, which again plays into the hands of scammers only.
In the spring of this year, the parties came to an amicable agreement, and Kuibida transferred the shares of Komkon JSC to a third party in order to prevent, by all indications, a new decision of the Kamchatka arbitration court in favor of Rudenko. Case closed, hurray, finita la comedy. The epic, however, does not end there. After a short time, Rudenko, who had already received his money back for the shares, from under house arrest, sent to arbitration a statement that the opposite party was allegedly not complying with the settlement agreement. What is Judge Reshetko doing this time? Right. Instantly, without delving into the issue, he issues a writ of execution in favor of Rudenko, in fact continuing to delay the process.
They say that the manipulation of the writ of execution was intended to force Kuibida to abandon her claim in another key arbitration case No. A24-5930/2020 - about the withdrawal of assets. The ultimate goal is to collapse the criminal case against Obedin-Rudenko, which is being conducted by the Moscow investigator. And again, even after the case is terminated, the invisible arbitration angel helps the Kamchatka raiders.
“What is the profit?” - an inexperienced reader will ask. The stakes are high, the jackpot is tempting, they didn’t hold the candle, but evil tongues claim that the market fees are in the tens of millions.
While this endless mess continues, Kuibida, and now the new investor, still cannot restore full legal control over the enterprise. This means they cannot fulfill their obligations and, in the shortest possible time, transfer to the use of the region part of the land plots of the PSRP, on which the construction of the LNG complex should begin. This is fraught with the disruption of a project of national importance and colossal reputational, financial and economic losses for all participants: from the regional government and Russia to Novatek, Rusatom and 300 thousand residents of the region.
Unfortunately, this story is not about the independence of the arbitration judiciary and the fearless warrior of Themis who fights for the triumph of law and justice. A study of the two-year law enforcement practice of one particular judge sadly confirms this. Interested people's ears stick out from almost every decision. Rather a story about dirty schemes and human vices. And, as a result, a deliberately unjust decision, which led to an endless series of other illegal judicial acts. Yes, they were later overturned by the court of cassation, but this “mistake” paralyzed work for years and mutilated the normal lives of many people. And it continues, like a foreign body, to harm everyone except swindlers - including state interests and security. Who will be responsible for this?
