Canine greyhounds: why dog trapping auctions were occupied by scammers

In the Krasnoyarsk Territory, a criminal case on fraud against an official of the Bogotolsky district administration, who colluded with an individual entrepreneur engaged in dog trapping, was completed: the businesswoman only fictitiously executed the contract. Similar criminal cases have been initiated or have already been completed in several other regions of Russia. Other investigators are already making checks: in particular, in Elista they were instructed to open a case on the fact of improper organization of dog trapping. In this region, the system of working with neglected animals has yet to be tested, but it is already clear that it turned out to be completely opaque. Izvestia investigated how the sphere of treatment of stray animals turned into a field for embezzlement of budget funds and what schemes exist for this.

In which regions have the facts of embezzlement already been revealed

In the Bogotolsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, a leading specialist of the administration fell under the article on large-scale fraud. In February 2025, she entered into an agreement with an individual entrepreneur when concluding a contract for 601 thousand rubles. Instead of actual dog trapping, the businesswoman brought previously captured animals to her shelter in Achinsk, and provided fictitious reports to the administration, which were accepted by the official.

In Kamyshlov, Sverdlovsk region, the heads of a dog holding center were detained, whom local volunteers accused of cruelty to animals, and the Investigative Committee suspected of embezzlement of budget funds. According to the investigation, the suspects provided forged documents about the completed works, systematically overestimating their cost.

In Saratov, a verdict has already been passed on fraud for 13 million rubles in the execution of the contract. Six defendants received from one to two years in a penal colony. In 2022-2023, they overestimated the actual amount of work performed and provided false documents. In addition to the theft of funds, their actions led to an increase in the dog population in Saratov and the number of their attacks on humans. 69 residents of the city, including 62 minors, were recognized as victims in the case.

In the Altai Territory, the investigation of the case in the Kulundinsky district has been completed, where, instead of performing the work provided for, the accomplices produced fictitious acceptance and transfer certificates, accounting logs and other accounting documents with deliberately false information about the full fulfillment of obligations. Veterinarians also participated in the scheme, which fictitiously carried out examinations and medical manipulations with dogs.

Why did the UK pay attention to Elista

In the first days of April, the Chairman of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, instructed to open a criminal case in Elista. Local residents complained that in the 5th microdistrict of the city, near residential buildings, there are many stray dogs that attack people, but no one catches them.

In Elista, a temporary detention facility for animals without owners is engaged in trapping stray dogs. It was opened very recently — in July 2025. The facility is designed for 28 dogs. In the PVS community, photos of animals that are being given into good hands are regularly posted on the VKontakte social network.

The animal shelter confirmed that there are no contracts with other organizations in the city. In response to a question from Izvestia about the basis on which the organization operates, the PVS stated that "there is no contract," but did not explain how animal trapping is funded, advising them to contact the veterinary department of the Republic of Kalmykia. This department had not responded to Izvestia at the time of publication.

Indeed, in rare cases, work on trapping stray animals can be carried out without concluding a contract under Federal Law 44-FZ — if a state-funded institution performs trapping on its own within the framework of a state task. However, in any case, the municipal task and financing through a subsidy must be approved.

Izvestia also sent a request to the administration of Elista. No response has been received at the time of publication.

It is difficult to call the work of the PVS transparent: reports on captured dogs are photographs of animals that are offered to be handed over to good hands. It is not known where they were captured, when, or what manipulations were performed with them.

According to the law and according to the procedure established in the Republic, reports should not be public. But officials will be required to provide internal documents to investigators, which must contain information about the dog with a photo, information about the place, time, method of capture, transportation and veterinary manipulations, as well as information about its fate — whether the animal was returned to its former habitat, transferred to a new owner or left in a shelter.

Meanwhile, in the comments in the PVS community, local residents discuss that many animals that have been taken from the streets "disappear without a trace", not appearing in photos of the point after capture, but not returning to the street.

Until October 2025, IP Fischer A.V. was engaged in dog trapping in Elista in accordance with 44-FZ. His contract stipulated that information about each animal that entered the shelter should be public: a photo, registration number, description should appear on the shelter's website. However, reports on the capture of dogs, which provided for the executed contract, could not be found in the public field. The parties terminated the contract for 3 million by mutual agreement. Fischer captured 96 dogs worth 2.13 million rubles in two months.

How contracts are evaded

Alexander Fischer is an entrepreneur from Stavropol who works in the Krasnodar Territory, Kalmykia, and other regions. The situation with termination of the contract "by agreement of the parties" is not uncommon for him — for example, in Armavir, an entrepreneur signed a contract for 8.9 million rubles in 2025, but received only 6.3 million for the amount of work actually performed. From this city, Fischer took the dogs to the Best Friend shelter in Stavropol. They confirmed to Izvestia that they had indeed accepted from him the number of dogs specified in the contract documents.

This entrepreneur also works in the Tbilisi region of the Krasnodar Territory. It was there that a few years ago there was a scandal with another contractor, IE Kolosova E. A. She signed a contract with the municipality in January 2023, which was actually performed by Maxim Kolosov. The court decision in a criminal case that arose on the basis of a contract shows well how the work of trapping dogs is organized.

The court materials indicate that Maxim Kolosov, when captured, first immobilized the dog with an injection dart with the drug "Adilin-super", and then injected a lethal dose of the same drug with a syringe, although he should not have killed the animals at all. Instead of a shelter, the dogs ended up in a crematorium in Krasnodar — this is established and described in court materials. At the same time, after each "capture", acts of allegedly completed work were drawn up, the administration paid 392.5 thousand rubles for them.

When the scheme was discovered and a criminal case was initiated, the contractor returned only 190 thousand rubles. This satisfied the officials: the parties reached reconciliation, and the district administration asked for the criminal case to be dropped. The prosecutor's office and the judge did not object. The dogs were killed instead of humanely captured, but no one was actually punished for this.

— The customer's actions surprise the most. Officials should be checked at least for negligence," Sergei Egorov, a lawyer at Egorov and Parterres, said in an interview with Izvestia. — The customer signed all the certificates of completed works without looking at them and paid for them, although a number of services were not actually provided by Kolosov. At the same time, the customer petitioned for reconciliation with the attacker who stole budget funds.

IP Ekaterina Kolosova, according to local animal rights organizations, continues to work in the Krasnodar Territory. She makes small direct contacts with municipalities. It is claimed that the methods of treatment of neglected animals remain cruel.

Why are scammers working on dog trapping?

The execution of the contract must be supervised by the customer, who, in turn, can be checked by the supervisory authority on his own initiative or at the request of a citizen, explained Sergey Egorov. But often the current moratorium on business inspections comes into play. At the same time, public inspectors are often not allowed into shelters.

The effectiveness of control depends on the specific region and municipality. Elena Afrova, director of the Fidelity charity organization, who recently started working on trapping in Yaroslavl, notes strict control, which does not imply the possibility of stealing something from somewhere.

— They check every penny. They go on field trips with us, they come to our shelter. We have very detailed photo and video recordings — photos of castration, photos of animal capture, animal delivery, and so on, right down to the chip number," she told Izvestia. — The customer has the tools for monitoring. The main thing is to have a desire.

At the same time, she notes, contractors who have been accused of dishonesty also work in the Yaroslavl region. She points to the contractor, IP Sharipova B. T., whose brother (Yusufjon Sharipov) has been working on dog trapping since 2016. There were a lot of complaints about him, and it all ended with Sharipov being included in the register of unscrupulous suppliers in 2020, and his sole proprietor was liquidated. However, at the same time, his sister's sole proprietorship appeared, which continues to work now.

The sphere of dog trapping has become fertile for theft and fraud at the moment, Sergey Egorov is sure.

— They often save on everything: on food, for example. If the animals have died, it can be attributed to a case that no one will check. The "own" veterinarian will find diseases, and the "own" dog handler will recognize the dog as unmotivated aggressive — and this will become the basis for killing. Drugs for euthanasia are not cheap, but you can use available curare—like drugs," the lawyer said.

Meanwhile, State Duma deputy Vladimir Burmatov believes that there is no more theft in trapping stray animals than in any other municipal function. However, he admits that there is a lot of outright fraud in this area, and violations are determined by "collusion between the contractor of the contract and its initiator" — the one who conducts the competitive procedures.

The clearest evidence of abuse is pregnant dogs with tags on their ears on the streets, the parliamentarian points out. This means that the animals were captured, but they were spayed fictitiously. Natalia Tsvetkova, coordinator of the charity programs of the Ray Foundation for Homeless Animals, notes that they received dogs that even have stitches from tissue incisions, but there were no operations themselves.

The current control system is too formal, which is fertile ground for fraud, the Izvestia interlocutor is convinced.

At the same time, some contractors deliberately do not catch all the females in the dog pack so that the animals do not run out, as well as the opportunity to participate in tenders for trapping, added Svetlana Alekseeva, co—founder of the Take Happiness into the House foundation, a member of the interdepartmental working group at the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation.

How to change the situation

According to Svetlana Alekseeva, the work carried out in the Moscow region can serve as a positive example of controlling the situation with trapping stray animals.

— Here the row is divided into several parts: the first is trapping, the second is sterilization, vaccination, chipping and tagging in a state veterinary clinic, the third is keeping in a shelter for two to three weeks for budget money after the operation. Thus, all sterilizations are controlled by a government agency," the expert said.

She is confident that the introduction of such a scheme in other regions of Russia will help prevent fraud.

A good effect can be achieved where contracts are transferred to organizations that have already proven themselves in this area: for example, public organizations that have built a shelter and are doing high-quality work, although they do not receive budget funds, said Vladimir Burmatov.

But the most important thing now, Svetlana Alekseeva emphasizes, is the adoption of a law on the mandatory registration of all pets and the entry of their data together with the owner's data into a single state database. According to her, this will dramatically reduce the number of discarded animals, solve the problem with self-care, and also reduce budget costs for endless trapping. Because within five to seven years after the adoption of the new norm, stray animals will simply disappear from the streets. Such a bill has already been developed, but in January of this year the Duma Council postponed its consideration.

At the same time, other laws need to be adopted: to regulate the sphere of dog breeding, a system of response and confiscation, to introduce insurance tools for animal owners, etc.

In addition, Natalia Tsvetkova calls for the establishment of mandatory photo and video recording of all stages of the contract and the publication of reports on work on trapping stray animals.