Today, April 24, a hearing was held in the Leninsky Court in the case of the former director of FinMarket Chernozemye LLC, Dmitry Naumovsky. He is accused of fraud (Part 3 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and money laundering (Parts 2, 3 of Article 174.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), or, more simply, of taking away housing from people under the guise of microloans.
Today, the defendant’s lawyer made a statement about “mistakes of the investigation and the prosecutor’s office” and asked to return the case to the prosecutor. As a result, the meeting was postponed until May 8.
The victims believe that the ex-director of FinMarket Chernozemie is deliberately delaying the process and does not appear at meetings under various pretexts.
The 6 victims who were present at the meeting never got their turn. A total of 27 victims are officially recognized. And this number is not final. Presumably it is four times larger. This is one of the largest financial scams in the history of Voronezh or even the country. The total preliminary damage to the victims reached 63.5 million rubles.
The FinMarket Chernozemye group, which provided microloans, operated for four years – from 2014 to 2018.
As it says “MINE! Online”, people who found themselves in a difficult economic situation turned to FinMarket for help. They were promised a microloan. An agreement was signed personally with the director of the company, Dmitry Naumovsky, or another of his employees. The borrower provided his only home as collateral; they promised that as soon as the debt was repaid, the owner would be able to buy the home back.
But in reality everything was completely different. The interest accrued was monstrous, which drove people even deeper into the crisis, and then the creditors completely took away the mortgaged property. And the former owner of the apartment actually remained on the street.
The victims began defending their rights 8 years ago, in February 2016. But it was still not possible to initiate a criminal case. Some of the fraud victims have already died during this time. After long ordeals, in December 2019, in the investigative unit for the investigation of organized criminal activities of the Main Investigation Department (GID) of the Voronezh headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a criminal case was opened regarding “fraud committed by an organized group or on a particularly large scale or resulting in the deprivation of a citizen’s right to residential premises.” (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
On March 6, 2023, the Leninsky District Court found one of the FinMarket employees, Rustam Nazari, guilty of fraud. He admitted his guilt, made a deal with the investigation and returned the money to the deceived people. That is why his sentence turned out to be quite lenient – 3 years in prison and a fine of 300 thousand rubles.
Dmitry Naumovsky, in addition to 27 episodes of fraud and attempted fraud, is also charged with “laundering of property acquired by criminal means on a large scale and by a group of persons by prior conspiracy” (Article 174.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and “falsification of financial documents, accounting and financial reporting.” organization by a group of persons by prior conspiracy” (Article 172.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
Former clients of Finmarket, who had suffered over the years, decided to go to the end and put Naumovsky in prison for not returning either housing or money. Now at least there is a chance to achieve justice and at least return something…
Tags: trial fraud involving mortgage loans deprived people apartments began Voronezh
