Where the court is going: why Olga Mirimskaya's case has become a test for the justice system

Olga Mirimskaya, the former head of BKF Bank, who was sentenced to 19 years in a penal colony and fined 400 million rubles for systemic corruption, is changing the colony. The application for an installment payment of the fine in the Kineshma city court was not considered on its merits, and all the case materials, as well as the defendant herself, are being transferred from the Ivanovo region to the Kaluga region. This decision coincided with the appeal of the verdict by the Mirimsky Moscow prosecutor's office, demanding that her sentence be reduced by more than half. About the oddities in the court case of the participant in the list of the richest people in the country — in the material of Izvestia.

Parallel processes

Two procedural dramas involving Mirimskaya unfold in parallel. The trial at Mirimskaya's request for an installment payment of the fine (she had already contributed 50 million rubles) was scheduled to take place on November 5. However, the meeting unexpectedly ended without consideration on the merits: the installment case was transferred from the Ivanovo region to the Kaluga Region. It is noteworthy that the Mirimskaya enterprise is located in the Kaluga region, and it was the employees of the Russian Product who, according to the investigation, participated in the transfer of bribes. Is this a coincidence? The question remains open. The postponement of the trial, the transfer of Mirimskaya to a penal colony in the Kaluga region and the position of the Moscow Prosecutor's office cause the experts interviewed by Izvestia to be rightly perplexed.

One of Mirimskaya's lawyers told Izvestia on her way out of court that her client was allegedly experiencing health problems — "a number of illnesses had worsened," which prevented her from being detained. The question remains as to how far all these unnamed ailments allow Mirimskaya to be transported from an isolation ward to an isolation ward.

Unexpected revision

Russian justice is often criticized for being too harsh, but something out of the ordinary is happening in the story of the Mirimskaya case. The prosecutor's office, whose direct duty is to defend the position of the prosecution, suddenly sided with the convict, demanding that her sentence be shortened. This unexpected turn jeopardizes not only the principle of the inevitability of punishment, but also casts doubt on the uniform standards of the law for all.

According to Kommersant, the deputy prosecutor of Moscow, Bogdan Kostenetsky, filed a cassation appeal, in which he asks to commute the sentence of 61-year-old Mirimskaya to 8 years and 9 months in prison.

The supervisory authority, in fact, justifies the actions of the convict with her "maternal feelings": part of the bribes, which amount to 3.7 million rubles in the form of money, cars and services, was transferred to investigator Yuri Nosov for the return of a newborn daughter born by a surrogate mother from abroad. "By transferring funds... As a mother, Mirimskaya tried to return her newborn child to Russia in any way," the document says, available to Kommersant.

It should be recalled that Izvestia closely followed the intricacies of Mirimskaya's lawsuit with her ex-husband and a surrogate mother who carried and gave birth to a child, whose "care" is now being tried as an excuse for acts of corruption. The case of the abduction of a newborn collapsed due to the lack of evidence of a crime. Izvestia repeatedly asked Mirimskaya to explain herself, but instead of calmly answering questions, she splashed coffee at our correspondent.

Double standards for a corrupt official

However, there are several important facts behind the scenes of this seemingly humanitarian initiative by Moscow prosecutors. Firstly, as established by the court, Mirimskaya is not just a bribe giver, but a systemic corrupt official. In addition to bribing the investigator, she tried three times to give multimillion—dollar bribes to judges - $ 700 thousand and another $ 1.75 million — as part of property disputes with ex-husbands. The prosecutor's office, recognizing their illegality, easily attributes these episodes to the fact that they were "not completed" and did not cause "actual negative consequences."

Secondly, the very logic of "helping grandma" raises questions. According to the source of Izvestia, who wished to remain anonymous, Mirimskaya is not even the mother, but the grandmother of the child currently being taken out of the Russian Federation. And if we follow this logic, where is the line when corruption in the interests of children becomes justified? And are there many precedents in our judicial practice when such large-scale crimes are forgiven for such motives?

Questionable connections and meteoric rise

Olga Mirimskaya's success story seemed to confirm the old truth: money decides everything. A native of Zhukovsky near Moscow, a graduate of the prestigious Georgetown University in the USA, she quickly broke into Russian big business. Already in the early noughties, she was the co-owner of the Russian Product company and chairman of the board of directors of BKF Bank, being on the list of the richest people in Russia. "One can only guess what was the reason for such a rapid rise of a graduate of an American university," the source of Izvestia ironically notes.

A separate touch in Mirimskaya's business reputation is her cooperation with Mikhail Khodorkovsky (recognized in the Russian Federation as a foreign agent and included in the list of terrorists and extremists of Rosfinmonitoring) and Leonid Nevzlin (recognized in the Russian Federation as a foreign agent). According to the information available to Izvestia, it was thanks to the deal with Mirimskaya, who sold them her stake in Yukos, that they were able to finally consolidate the asset. The consequence of this transaction was a lawsuit against the Russian state, satisfied by The Hague Supreme Court. Thus, Mirimskaya's actions indirectly contributed to the fact that a record $65 billion could be recovered from the Russian budget in favor of the former owners of Yukos.

The logical outcome

The long road of corruption schemes ended for Mirimskaya in 2021 with arrest, and three years later with a guilty verdict. The court, having found her guilty of crimes that destroy the foundations of justice, imposed a sentence of 19 years in a penal colony and a fine of 400 million rubles. It is noteworthy that, despite the severity of the charges, Mirimskaya has never admitted her guilt or repented of what she had done.

Now, against the background of personnel changes in the security unit, the convict's entourage, apparently, saw a new chance. According to Izvestia experts in the legal field, there is an attempt to use the transition period after the resignation of the Prosecutor General. This gives rise to the hope among certain circles that by the new year the "oligarch in a skirt" can be released after serving only a symbolic part of his term.

Mirimskaya's sentence, according to the Izvestia source, is not revenge, but "a consistent affirmation of the principle of equality of all before the law." Against this background, the actions of the prosecutor's office and the transfer of the trial to the Kaluga region look doubtful.

The outcome of this case may become a litmus test for the entire judicial and legal system of the country, according to lawyers interviewed by Izvestia.