The price of impunity: Why Olga Mirimskaya's story should be a lesson for society

Olga Mirimskaya, a member of the list of the richest people in the country, co-owner of Russian Product, and former chairman of the board of directors of BKF Bank, who was sentenced to 19 years and 400 million rubles in fines, is asking the court for early release from prison and payment of a multimillion-dollar fine in installments. Izvestia investigated whether she would be able to achieve her goal.

The lady with the fee

Olga Mirimskaya, a native of Zhukovsky near Moscow, seemed to have been born "with a golden spoon," as they say in the United States, which almost became her second homeland. At the very beginning of Perestroika, she graduated from the Faculty of Economic Cybernetics at the Plekhanov Moscow State University and entered the postgraduate program at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Soon she was interning in Warsaw, teaching an economics course at the University of Maryland and working at the Center for Strategic Initiatives in the United States, and even advising the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on conversion issues — recall that she was in her early 20s at the time. Already in 1992, having received her education overseas (Graduate School of International Politics at Georgetown University), Mirimskaya returned to the already new Russia, where she immediately launched a feverish business activity. At the same time, do not forget to acquire Israeli citizenship.

— Mirimskaya achieved success in business very quickly. At the beginning of the century, she was already a co-owner of the Russian Product company, then owned by Menatep Khodorkovsky, who personally invited her to head the company and chairman of the board of directors of BKF Bank, and was also on the list of the richest people in Russia. One can only guess what was the reason for such a rapid rise of an American university graduate," says a source in the Izvestia business community who wished to remain anonymous.

Her business connections included the notorious Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky (recognized in Russia as a foreign agent and included in the Rosfinmonitoring list of terrorists and extremists), the Izvestia interlocutor recalls.

Mirimskaya helped Khodorkovsky and his accomplice Leonid Nevzlin (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation) consolidate Yukos shares by selling her stake and her ex-husband for $ 135 million, which allowed the former shareholders to file a lawsuit against Russia for $ 55 billion. This claim was finally settled in mid-October by The Hague Supreme Court. The amount of compensation that Mirimskaya helped Khodorkovsky and Nevzlin achieve amounted to $ 50 billion, and taking into account all penalties, it has already reached $ 65 billion.

At the same time, all the changes taking place in the country did not seem to concern Mirimskaya. As if in the "dashing 90s," she tried to buy up wholesale investigators and judges in cases in which she had an interest or was involved herself. Sometimes, alas, it worked.

As it was established during the trial, in September 2014, Mirimskaya tried to transfer 700 thousand dollars through intermediaries as a bribe to officials of the arbitration court for the cancellation of a decision rendered not in her favor. Subsequently, she tried twice more to transfer astronomical bribes to the judges — the scam failed due to the deceit of the intermediary.

However, bribes in kind were transferred to the investigator of the Investigative Committee, Yuri Nosov, for carrying out actions, making procedural decisions in her interests and providing her with information on the progress and results of the investigation into the theft of her property during the year. In total, Mirimskaya handed Nosov bribes in the form of money, two cars and other property, as well as illegal provision of property services totaling more than 3.7 million rubles.

By the way, as a law enforcement source reminded Izvestia, back in 2017, a criminal case was opened against the billionaire for violating the secrecy of telephone conversations between lawyers for her former common-law husband Smirnov, with whom Mirimskaya was suing "for separation from her daughter."

Money doesn't solve everything

But, as you know, no matter how much string you twist... Olga Mirimskaya was detained by Russian law enforcement agencies in 2021. She was found guilty on several counts — under Part 5 of Article 291 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (giving a bribe to an official for committing knowingly illegal acts on an especially large scale), Part 3 of Article 30, Part 5 of Article 291 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (attempted bribery of an official through an intermediary on an especially large scale) and convicted last year. She was sentenced to 19 years in prison and fined 400 million rubles. The verdict was passed for bribing judges and bribing an investigator of the Investigative Committee, crimes that undermine the very foundation of justice. But despite the severity of the charges and the verdict of the court, Mirimskaya has never repented of what she did.

And justice for all

Today, when there is a change of leadership in law enforcement agencies, Mirimskaya once again saw a chance for luck. The court hearing, where she intends to ask for an installment payment of a multimillion-dollar fine, is scheduled for November 5. Moreover, as Izvestia's experts in the field of jurisprudence noted, the staff of the Prosecutor General's Office suddenly filed a cassation motion, proposing to reduce Mirimskaya's sentence from 19 years to 8 years and 9 months. According to Izvestia's sources, certain circles tried to take advantage of the brief period of "inter-power" immediately after the departure of the previous Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov. In other words, after the New Year, the "oligarch in a skirt" may be released.

At the same time, Mirimskaya's "defenders" are obviously not bothered even by the fact that she sponsored the Right Sector, which is banned in Russia (and then monetary circumstances did not interfere with her). The Ukrainian neo-Nazis even awarded Mirimskaya with a "certificate of honor", which is still on display on the extremists' social networks.

— Mirimskaya's harsh sentence is not revenge or reprisals, but a return to the principle that there is one law for all. And that is why today's attempts by both the convict herself and her patrons, who have joined the ranks of the prosecutor's office, to achieve leniency look like a mockery of this principle," the Izvestia source believes.

According to the lawyer, every bribe-giver destroys public confidence in the state, every bought sentence kills faith in justice. If such people are released to New Year's fanfare, it will be a real insult to honest citizens.

The current Prosecutor General's Office is faced with a choice — either to confirm that the law in Russia is truly equal for all, or to show that justice can still be bought. The decision in the Mirimskaya case will be a test not only for prosecutors, but also for the entire judicial system.

Olga Mirimskaya's fate is a vivid example of the fact that in Russia there are no more representatives of the business elite who ignore the requirements of the law and abuse the law in order to violate it.