| The St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly was the scene of
charges of political prosecution on Wednesday, following the Tuesday
arrest of Union of Right Forces (SPS) lawmaker Alexei Kovalyov.
The City Prosecutor's Office has charged Kovalyov with misappropriation
of government funds, maintaining that he organized a kickback
scheme to bilk the city budget of 2 billion rubles ($390,000)
in 1996.
But a number of lawmakers said that the Prosecutor's initiative
has nothing to do with the law, but instead is related to the
upcoming Legislative Assembly elections. The date for the elections
is presently being negotiated by the assembly.
"It was discovered that Alexei Kovalyov was involved in
criminal collusion with assistants ... at his office in Spring
1996 to misappropriate budgeted money that was earmarked for renovation
of historical and cultural monuments in St. Petersburg,"
Ivan Sydoruk, the City Prosecutor, said at Wednesday's Legislative
Assembly session.
Sydoruk said that Kovalyov and his assistants organized the
kickback scheme with management at Podzemproyect and Glavzapspetsstroi,
two local construction companies. He also said that the order
for Kovalyov's arrest was not issued until after the lawmaker
had repeatedly ignored summons to appear at the prosecutor's office
to answer questions about the investigation.
"There are still more questions than answers in this case,"
Sydoruk said.
In 1996 each of the 50 deputies in the Legislative Assembly
was allocated about $1 million to use to fund projects of their
choosing.
Kovalyov, who represents District No. 1 on Vasilievsky Island,
has been a member of the local parliament in its various guises
since 1990. He said that, over the last few years, he has used
these funds to finance the repair and maintenance of various cultural
landmarks around St. Petersburg.
But investigators say that Kovalyov and his assistants forced
the construction companies they contracted to perform the work
to hand over 10 to 15 percent of the money they received from
the St. Petersburg budget.
The charges against Kovalyov have been met with disbelief by
other lawmakers. "The arguments produced by the Prosecutor's
Office looked absolutely insupportable and generated mostly laughter
among those listening to [Sydoruk]," said Leonid Romankov,
an SPS faction lawmaker, in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
Romankov said that this is not the first time these charges
have been made. He said that, in 1996, City Hall tried to use
the threat of the charges to pressure Kovalyov to vote for the
removal of Yury Kravtsov from the position of speaker of the Legislative
Assembly. Kravtsov had fallen into disfavor with the governor
by opposing a number of Smolny initiatives.
"[Acting vice-governor Alexander] Potekhin came up to him
one day with a draft version of criminal charges and told him
that, if he didn't vote how they asked, a case would be initiated
against him. He didn't go along, though," Romankov said.
Alexander Potekhin could not be reached for comment on Thursday.
"I don't know anything about the nature of this case,"
said Ciy Hall Spokesperson Alexander Afanasyev in a telephone
interview Wednesday.
"It is widely known that Kovalyov was always running away
[from the Prosecutor's Office]. Everybody knows it," Afanasyev
said.
Twelve lawmakers from the SPS and Zakonnost factions in the
assembly have filed a joint letter of protest to Ivan Sydoruk,
charging that the City Prosecutor's office acted in contravention
of federal laws guaranteeing legislators immunity from prosecution.
The Legislative Assembly must vote to lift a lawmaker's immunity
before he or she can be arrested.
"A request in this form was sent [to the assembly] by the
City Prosecutor's Office on March 24, 2000. It was considered
by the Legislative Assembly, which decided on April 12, 2000 to
deny the request," the lawmakers wrote in the letter.
"We demand the immediate release of Alexei Kovalyov."
The Northwest Region Prosecutor's Office, which is one level
above that of the City Prosecutor, said Thursday that it would
investigate the legality of Kovalyov's arrest, Interfax reported.
"[We are] going to look into the question of whether taking
such a serious measure against the lawmaker was reasonable, especially
considering the fact that he lives with his four-year-old son
and his late wife's mother, who herself suffered a stroke recently,"
an anonymous source at the Northwest Region Prosecutor's office
was quoted as saying by Interfax
The Prosecutor's Office has named a former assistant to Kovalyov,
Alexei Kozev, as one of the main witnesses in the case, even though
observers question his reliability on the basis of the state of
his mental health.
Kozev, who is currently in jail waiting trial on the same charges
as Kovalyov, declared in 1983 that his apartment was part of the
United States, and introduced a visa system for family members
wishing to enter or leave.
According to Kozev's own account, he levied fines on his family
for visa "violations" and other actions he considered
illegal.
"[Kozev] is a very educated person and he ... stood up
for historical monuments in St. Petersburg," Kovalyov said
in an April 2000 interview, while his case was being discussed
by the Legislative Assembly. "I knew he had problems, but
I didn't think that it would go too far,"
Kozev, meanwhile, wrote to his mother from jail, saying that
inmates were torturing him to get him to sign confessions implicating
Kovalyov. The letter was passed on to Kovalyov by Kozev's mother.
Lawmakers in the assembly say that the members of the city administration
would also have to have been involved to some degree in such a
crime, and say that it is strange that he is the only one presently
being charged.
"Nothing that Kovalyov is being charged with could have
been initiated without the participation of the City Hall authorities,"
Mikhail Amosov, the head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative
Assembly, said Wednesday. "But the Prosecutor's Office said
that charges were not filed against these officials because of
the staleness of the events. What does that mean?"
Ruslan Linkov, the head of the St. Petersburg branch of the
Democratic Russia party, arrived at Kovalyov's apartment as investigators
were carrying out a search before arresting him on Tuesday night.
"It was all done in such a violent way," Linkov said
in a telephone interview Wednesday. "They took 82 pages of
documents from Kovalyov's archives, mainly correspondence between
him and the prosecutor related to the case. It seems that Sydoruk
didn't have copies of his own letters to Kovalyov," he said.
Linkov also said that the investigators confiscated $600, the
only money that Kovalyov had on his person.
"One of the investigators came up to his four-year old
son and told him that his father is a thief," Linkov said.
"Then, after his grandmother asked investigators what money
she was going to use to buy bread tomorrow, one of them counted
out 100 Finnish marks and a $1 bill and threw it on the table."
"They also tried to make me leave the flat, despite the
fact that, according articles No. 169 and 170 of the Criminal
Code, a person present during a search isn't allowed to leave,"
Linkov added.
Linkov said that he believes the Prosecutor's Office has initiated
the charges in an attempt to discredit Kovalyov in his district
in order "to clean the field for his likely opponent in the
upcoming elections, who is a city law-enforcement official."
Linkov refused to name the official.
Kovalyov first became well known in 1989, when he organized
the opposition to plans to demolish the Hotel d'Angleterre on
St. Isaac's Square.
He is the third Legislative Assembly lawmaker to be jailed in
recent years. Yury Shutov was arrested February 1999 and charged
in connection with a number of assassinations. His trial is still
under way. Sergei Shevchenko was charged in April 2000 with extortion.
He was convicted to and sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison, although
the sentence was suspended.
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