Anomalous Documents Submitted by Russian Law Enforcement in Criminal Prosecution

Abstract

This report shows which documents the prosecution's case rested on in the criminal prosecution of L. in Russia. The conflict began as a commercial dispute over a supply contract: a commercial court ordered the counterparty to pay its debt to the company that L. represented. A complainant, whom the defence links to the counterparty, then went to the police, and L. was charged with attempted fraud and twice put on the wanted list. The court found both wanted listings unlawful.

For each document we checked whether anything independent confirms what it states: a postal reply, Interior Ministry records, correspondence between the authorities and L. Discrepancies were found in five documents. A security agency order cites a report dated later than the order itself. The order for the second wanted listing assumes that L. had been notified of a summons, yet the first summons reached him only nine months later. The sending of summonses was confirmed only by entries in the investigating authority's own outgoing mail register, while the postal operator replied that no letters had arrived at L.'s address. The search file was opened 47 days after the listing order. In another proceeding, an order was cancelled that was dated almost six months before the crime report that started the case.

The wanted listings cost L. at least 770 days on the wanted list, and both times the listing stayed in force for another 43 and 107 days after the court ruling. According to L., his legal costs came to at least USD 100,000 and his business losses to USD 800 million.

The report suggests that judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL's Files begin any review of a wanted listing by asking which record outside the investigating authority confirms that the person was notified of the summons.