According to the Investigative Committee, Anatoly Bykov, a Russian businessman from Krasnoyarsk and a former chairman of the board of the world's largest aluminium company RUSAL's Krasnoyarsk aluminum plant (KrAZ), did not pay about 60 million rubles ($820,205) in taxes to the budget. His defense says that investigators are simply “drowning” him in numerous criminal cases.
The Department of the Investigative Committee for the Krasnoyarsk territory and the Republic of Khakassia said that Bykov had been charged with huge tax evasion. According to the investigators, in 2014 - 2017, Anatoly Bykov bought the debts of three Krasnoyarsk companies from certain foreign creditors. The debtors paid him almost half a billion rubles ($6.84 mln.) in 2017 – 2019. It was from this money that Bykov did not pay taxes as a natural person. He predictably denied tax evasion.
As wek.ru wrote earlier, Anatoly Bykov has been in detention since last May. Several criminal cases were brought against him over murder, attempted murder and tax fraud. The most serious case has been referred to the court. It relates to the events of 1994 when the gang of the former sports instructor Bykov was just gaining strength. A disagreement over money arose between its members. Two criminals, dissatisfied with the way how the income was distributed, were killed soon.
Crime boss Vladimir Tatarenkov was the killer. Police arrested him shortly thereafter and he spent the last two decades behind bars. He kept silent about Anatoly Bykov's involvement in the crime. Recently, Tatarenkov was released from prison. Shortly before that, he began to cooperate with the investigators. The charges against Bykov are mainly based on his testimonies. According to the investigators, Tatarenkov kept silent because he did not want more problems. When his jail term was almost over, he realized that there was no point in keeping silent any longer. Tatarenkov voiced a slightly different version. While being in prison, Tatarenkov expected help from Bykov for not turning him in. When it did not happen, he came out into the open.
Wek.ru sources report that Bykov “is impertinent” in the pre-trial detention center. He constantly bickers with guards and investigators. He was even placed for that in a disciplinary cell. Apparently, he is not going to agree to any compromises, despite the fact that his prospects are very grim, up to life imprisonment. Thus, Anatoly Bykov refused to cooperate with the investigation. He was offered to confess to masterminding a murder in the 1990s. In exchange for that, he was promised that his case would be stopped due to the statute of limitations. However, this refusal of Bykov is understandable. There are other criminal cases, more “recent” ones. The investigators are not offering to cooperate in them. If Bykov admits to the murder, one can easily guess how this will be interpreted by the judges.
Just a week before bringing the tax evasion charges, the investigators accused Bykov of inciting to a murder and inciting to attempted double murder. The court ruled to arrest Bykov's property, a top-class real estate and a land plot. The total value of his property is approximately 50 million rubles ($ 683,504.55.) In short, Bykov was beset on all sides.
“These criminal cases are not new. These are charges within the cases filed last year. Previously, he was a suspect, but now he is a defendant. At present, the investigation has three cases pending, and another one is already being considered by the Sverdlovsk court in Krasnoyarsk. The ones being investigated are the case of incitement of Andrei Nekolov to contact hit and the case of incitement to the attempted murder of Grabovsky that were combined into one criminal case. This is a criminal case of large-scale tax evasion. At the same time, a criminal case on setting up and running an organized criminal group is being investigated. Apparently the investigators just try to “drown” Bykov in the charges because it would be impossible to fight back against all of them. I share that viewpoint as well,” Bykov's lawyer Alexei Prokhorov told wek.ru.