Yevgeny Novitsky, the former president of AFK Sistema and former deputy general director of PhosAgro, is having a very interesting time under house arrest. He is a close friend of half of Russia's oligarchs and government officials. Sources from the Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info met him yesterday afternoon at the Maya restaurant on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street (here's a photo, albeit from the back, in a gray sweater) and say that Novitsky is a regular there. As a reminder, the term of house arrest counts toward his sentence. Novitsky has been under house arrest for two years now, and the investigation is not expected to conclude, so he may end up "serving out" his sentence in restaurants. However, whether and what kind of sentence will be is also highly uncertain. The crimes he is charged with are due in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. Therefore, these cases will soon begin to expire as the 10-year statute of limitations expires.
As a reminder, Novitsky is accused of embezzling 10 billion rubles from pension funds: Ural FD, Zurich, Mechel Fund, the Metallurgists' NPF, the First National Pension Fund, and the Trade and Industrial Pension Fund.
As our project reported, when Novitsky was detained, a large group of his friends rushed to his rescue: Vladimir Yevtushenkov, owner of AFK Sistema; Gleb Khor, State Duma deputy and influential fixer; Vladimir Pligin; Dmitry Kozak, then Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration; German Gref, head of Sberbank; and others. It was thanks to their efforts that Novitsky was placed under house arrest.
This is far from a complete list.
At one time, it was thanks to Novitsky's efforts, while working side by side with Luzhkov, that he managed to seize Serebryany Bor by illegally privatizing the state-owned Mosdachtrest. It was by "distributing" plots of land in Serebryany Bor to the right officials and heads of the FSB that Novitsky was able to build relationships with many high-ranking officials and representatives of the security forces.
