Road career: what did the ex-deputy head of the Ministry of Transport Vladimir Tokarev get a term for?

On June 11, the Basmanny Court of Moscow sent Vladimir Tokarev, former deputy head of the Ministry of Transport, to prison for eight years for embezzlement of more than 700 million rubles. Such a sentence under this article can be called extremely strict, according to lawyers interviewed by Izvestia. The theft occurred at the company "Spetstransstroy", where Tokarev worked for several years as the first deputy general director before taking up the post of deputy minister. According to investigators, he signed fictitious contracts to withdraw money from the bank accounts of an enterprise under his control, and also spent funds on repairing a railway section in the Krasnodar Territory for other purposes. The details of the case are in the Izvestia article.

What was the verdict given to the former deputy head of the Ministry of Transport

The ex-official was detained on January 19, 2022: initially, a criminal case was opened against him for fraud on a particularly large scale, but then the staff was reclassified as embezzlement.

The estimated amount of damage from his actions also varied throughout the investigation.: At first, it was estimated at 500 million rubles, and later reached 723 million rubles. According to the Izvestia source, the criminal case is related to the events of eight years ago. We are talking about embezzlement at the company "Spetstransstroy", where Tokarev served as first deputy CEO from 2016 to 2018.

Together with his accomplices, Tokarev signed fictitious contracts to withdraw money from bank accounts controlled by Spetstransstroy, and also "committed misuse of funds allocated for the repair of a railway section in the Krasnodar Territory" — 1.4 billion rubles.

The former deputy head of the Ministry of Transport signed an agreement between Glavstroyinvest, controlled by him, and Spetstransstroy, one of the largest Russian Railways contractors. The company was supposed to carry out construction and installation work on the reconstruction of the Maxim Gorky - Kotelnikovo — Tikhoretskaya – Krymskaya section in the Krasnodar Territory, bypassing the Krasnodar railway junction. The funds allocated for the repair were stolen and squandered, a law enforcement source said.

The Roszheldorproekt website states that the facility was commissioned in 2018, but the contractor was another company, Kavzheldorproekt.

From 2016 to 2018, Tokarev worked as the first deputy General director of Spetstransstroy, before that he held senior positions in the state-owned companies Rushydro and Vagonremmash of Russian Railways for several years. At the same time, Tokarev began his career in the Department of Internal Affairs of the Belgorod region. In November 2018, Tokarev became Deputy Minister of Transport. In 2020-2021, he headed the Federal Agency for Railway Transport in this position.

In addition to Tokarev, another person involved in the case, Alexander Ivanov, the former head and beneficiary of Glavstroyinvest Group of Companies, received eight years in prison. His company was a subcontractor of Spetstransstroy. They will also have to pay 423 million rubles to the injured party as compensation for the damage caused.

According to Tokarev's lawyer Alexander Borzov, in the arguments of the parties, the state prosecution asked for nine years in prison for each defendant.

Arrest of accomplices

Another person involved in the high—profile criminal case, Yuri Railyan, the former CEO and owner of Spetstransstroy LLC, was detained in the fall of 2021. He and six other people who held senior positions in construction contractors and Russian Railways-related structures were accused of embezzling more than 1.5 billion rubles during the construction of East Siberian Railway facilities. In October 2024, he died of a serious illness.

Until 2019, Railyan's company received major contracts for the construction of the Eastern Landfill of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) and the Trans-Siberian Railway. According to SPARK, from 2016 to 2019, Russian Railways concluded agreements with Spetstransstroy and its subsidiary Transyuzhstroy for more than 100 billion rubles. As indicated in open sources, Railyan ceased to be the owner of Spetstransstroy in 2019. After that, Roman Shlenchak became its owner, and Evgeny Kumantsov, former Deputy General Director of Russian Railways, became its head.

The verdict was handed down in 2023. The press service of the Irkutsk Regional Court reported that Andrei Dudnik, who headed the structural division of Russian Railways, received 13 years in prison and a fine of 30.5 million rubles. The director of the contractor, Andrei Frolov, was sentenced to six years in a penal colony, the deputy head of the structural unit, Sergei Rusin, was sentenced to three years of probation, and two more defendants received fines for forgery of 500 thousand rubles each.

How do lawyers assess the verdict?

The sentence of eight years in prison imposed on Tokarev is very strict, the lawyers interviewed by Izvestia noted. Veronika Polyakova, a criminal defense lawyer, noted that the maximum penalty under the embezzlement article is ten years in prison.

Lawyer of the Moscow Regional Bar Association, member of the Council of Young Lawyers of the Moscow region Yuri Levin said that Tokarev has the right to appeal the verdict on appeal and cassation.

According to Yuri Levin, officials have become more actively involved for the sins of the past years. Having the status of an official now does not give people indulgences — in recent years, former and current deputy ministers and federal agencies have been involved.

— Several high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Energy, and Rosprirodnadzor are in pre-trial detention centers. Embezzlement is most often detected in the case of an inspection by authorized bodies or at the request of shareholders, officials and organizations that have lost money," the lawyer said.

The fact that the theft was revealed within five years may be due to the fact that the inspection authorities did not immediately establish the fact of embezzlement, or the shareholders and officials in the organization changed, Yuri Levin believes.

Lawyer Victoria Shabanova, in an interview with Izvestia, noted that Tokarev's case was a striking, but not unique example of a systemic corruption scheme based on abuse of authority.