On April 22, a court hearing took place in the case of Yuri Borisov, former secretary of the Council of People’s Deputies of the city of Vladimir.
Yuri Borisov, the former press secretary of the party of the regional branch of United Russia and the Vladimir SND, is accused of a crime under Part 2 of Art. 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (libel contained in a public speech, publicly displayed work or in the media).
Let us remind you that Yuri Borisov is charged with two cases of disseminating false information in the public telegram channels “Vladimirsky Trakt” and “Vladimir Vladimirovich”, which discredits the honor, dignity and business reputation of the victims. In fact, the telegram channel “Vladimir Vladimirovich” has long spoken unflatteringly about regional officials, often talking about the work of the governor of the Vladimir region Alexander Avdeev, the senator of the Russian Federation from the Legislative Assembly of the Vladimir region Vladimir Kiselyov, the mayor of the regional capital Dmitry Naumov, as well as the activities and other officials.
The victims in the case are Dmitry Lyzlov, first deputy governor of the Vladimir region for internal policy, and Anna Znatnova, director of the State Budgetary Institution VO “Agency for the Preservation and Use of Real Estate of the Vladimir Region.”
In court, the victim Dmitry Lyzlov and a witness in the case, Anastasia Gulina, were questioned, and the written and material materials of the case were examined. On April 8, the witness in the case, Dmitry Avershin, head of the department for combating the illegal use of information and communication technologies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Vladimir Region, was re-interrogated. Also speaking in the case was the first expert – Marina Artamonova, rector of the Vladimir Institute for Educational Development.
Let us remind you that, according to the investigation, Yuri Borisov committed both crimes in agreement with another well-known member of the United Russia party of previous years, the chairman of the regional KVN league “Vladimirskaya Rus” Roman Alexandrov. Law enforcement officials put Roman Alexandrov on the federal wanted list at the end of January. The basis was an article of the criminal code. The social activist said that he has been abroad since February 2023 and is being treated for a chronic disease.
At the last court hearing, the defense petitioned to recognize the investigator’s decision to initiate a criminal case against Yuri Borisov as illegal. In accordance with Part 1 of Article 154 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, the inquirer or investigator has the right to separate from a criminal case into separate proceedings another criminal case in relation to a certain circle of persons, however “None of these grounds are suitable for issuing a criminal case against Borisov”, the lawyer explained. Based on the petition, the court hearing was adjourned until April 22.
On April 22, a hearing on the case took place. The petition of the defendant and the defense was not satisfied. However, before the start of the trial, the defense attorney requested the questioning of a witness, Magamed Akhmatov.
Magamed Akhmatov shared that he has known the defendant for more than 20 years. The witness also knows the victim in the case, Znatnova, but not closely.
The court invited the witness to review one of the certificates from the criminal case materials. This document indicates that on March 5, a text file was created on Yuri Borisov’s computer, which mentioned the chairman of the Accounts Chamber of the Vladimir Region, Irina Tulyakova. On the same day, a post with identical content was posted on the “Vladimir Vladimirovich” channel.
However, this document is not fundamental in the case file. According to investigators, this document is evidence of Yuri Borisov’s involvement in the telegram channel.
Magamed Akhmatov admitted in the courtroom that he himself was the author of this text.
“I created this file a couple of years ago, in 2022, I don’t remember the exact date and month,” – shared the party chairman.
The judge asked about the circumstances of the writing of the text. The head of the regional department shared that he has been involved in the socio-political life of the region for 25 years.
“Most of the documents that I create depend on the socio-political situation in the city, in the region, in the country, and the reason was obvious socio-political,” – said Magamed Akhmatov.
The defendant’s defense lawyer asked to explain why the file authored by the chairman of the Rodina party, according to the file, was created by the user Yuri Borisov, to which the witness explained that his equipment often malfunctioned, and therefore he borrowed the equipment from the defendant.
“The laptop is not very shock-resistant and falls often. There was a situation where I needed a computer, mine was not working. I asked Yuri Yuryevich to provide equipment for work, he provided such an opportunity,” – said the witness.
Anticipating the court’s question, Magamed Akhmatov explained that he has not the slightest idea how the text of the document ended up in the public domain:
“Honest Pioneer – I don’t know” – shared the head of the party.
The prosecutor asked the witness how he realized that this text was his authorship. Magamed Akhmatov explained that he remembers the texts that he writes himself. The witness explained that if someone else puts forward the rights to authorship, then Magamed Akhmatov “will participate in the proceedings”. Also, when asked by the prosecution about how the text was created, the politician replied that good and smart thoughts can come to mind in a very unexpected way:
“Sometimes, I’m sleeping or going to bed, some thoughts come into my head, sometimes for a moment, a smart thought, a brilliant idea comes to mind. You will wake up in the morning, and it will have disappeared, if you haven’t recorded it. Perhaps, so that it does not disappear, the closest option to whom to reach was Yuri Yuryevich. I got to him and recorded my brilliant idea,” – answered the head of the Rodina party.
The thoughts were recorded on the computer. When asked by the prosecutor whether the witness discussed the criminal case with Yuri Borisov, Akhmatov explained that he discussed it when it went public. The judge also asked to clarify what the duties of the witness as the head of the regional branch of the party are, to which he explained that his duties include a large list of cases, starting with representing the party.
“Even though today we, unfortunately, are not included in the list of those elected, we are quite actively involved in political life, we participate in elections. We come out with initiatives, with proposals, we achieve, we control the processes that are taking place,” – said Magamed Akhmatov.
The head of the regional party also mentioned his political struggle with the ex-governor of the Vladimir region Vladimir Sipyagin:
“If, for example, there is, let’s say, a person inappropriate for the position or place, for example, Vladimir Vladimirovich Sipyagin, the former governor of the region, my comrades and I were at the forefront of the fight against him in order to remove him from this position.”– the politician emphasized.
When asked by the court whether Yuri Borisov wrote texts for speeches, the head of the regional department explained that he consulted with the defendant on this issue, but Yuri did not write full texts to him. However, the court presented the witness with screenshots of correspondence with the defendant, where Magamed Akhmatov asks Yuri to help with the text of the speech, and then there are texts sent repeatedly. The politician replied that this text was not relevant to the case, but if taken as a whole, the defendant could help him with formatting.
“As I see it, I sent the introduction, but he simply rearranged the commas or replaced one word with another, and sometimes it looks better. Because everything should be beautiful and clear,” – shared the head of the regional branch of the party.
After the interrogation, Magamed Akhmatov left the courtroom. Immediately after the removal of the witness, Yuri Borisov pleaded his innocence. According to Borisov’s petition, expert opinions do not allow checking the consistency of the texts. Yuri Borisov petitioned to exclude from the list of evidence several expert opinions at once, in particular the expert Kulpina, Artamonova and Borodulina.
Let us recall that Borodulina’s expert opinion contains the following conclusions: “the author of the text beginning with the words “a couple more words about Anna Znatnova” is the person whose written speech samples are presented for comparative research.”
During the inspection of the phone and correspondence of Yuri Borisov and Roman Alexandrov, specialist Artamonova took part, and explained that the texts in the correspondence and in the anonymous telegram channel are identical: the stylistic content, the design of syntactic constructions have identical deviations from the norms of the language, for example, punctuation errors and completely repeat the content, have stylistic identity, the use of non-literary words and expressions, and means of expression.
Of all the experts, only Artamonova was able to appear in court. The other two, for various reasons, did not appear at the court hearing.
The court hearing was postponed to May 6 for the prosecution to familiarize itself with the petition.
Tags: libel case exsecretary Vladimir City Council author texts declared
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