The officers of the Moscow Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia once again demonstrated that they are working according to their own criminal and procedural code, which does not allow registering crime reports as such, but considers them as usual applications of citizens which do not require appropriate reaction. This time the Investigative Committee refused to conduct a check of a report about the crime of one of their officers, Tatyana Myasnikova – in violation of the law, she forwarded the complaints of the protest rallies against the police battery from the Investigative Committee to the Ministry of the Interior. Moreover, the court established that she did not have a right to examine these complaints or to take any decisions on them whatsoever.
As we have previously reported, on 21 August 2019, lawyers with the Committee Against Torture submitted crime reports to the Investigative Committee of Russia addressed to its Chairman Aleksandr Bastrykin in the interests of five Muscovites who received injuries after the public rallies in the capital on 27 July and 3 August.
On 10 and 20 September, Deputy Head of the Second Monitoring and Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the RF for Moscow Tatyana Myasnikova forwarded these crime reports to the Ministry of the Interior. The crimes under Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the RF (“abuse of office) can be investigated only by the Investigative Committee investigators – the police officers do not have such authority.
Lawyers with the Committee Against Torture appealed against the rulings of Ms Myasnikova in court. On 9 October, the Presnensky District Court of Moscow established that Myasnikova’s authority “does not involve criminal prosecution in pre-trial proceedings for the criminal case”.
“It means that she did not have a right to examine any crime reports and take any decisions on them. This court ruling entered into legal force and now it is an officially recognized fact, – lawyer with the Committee Against Torture Anastasia Lvutina comments. – In our opinion, since Myasnikova cannot perform criminal prosecution in accordance with her authority, then she undoubtedly exceeded them. Which forms an element of crime under Part 1 of the Article on abuse of office”.
With regard to this, on 17 March 2020, lawyers with the Committee Against Torture submitted a crime report to the duty investigator of the Investigative Committee of Russia.
Despite the fact that it contained direct indication of the elements of crime committed by an official, as well as the reference to the court ruling, in fact, confirming the fact of the crime committal, the Investigative Committee officials once again refused to register the crime report according to the procedure established by the law.
«An official refusal to accept a crime report was issued immediately, only half an hour after the submittal of the crime report, – Lvutina comments. – Deputy Head of the Department for Investigating the Crimes Against the Person and Public Security of the Chief Investigative Directorate Vladimir Sharayev pointed out that the crime report does not contain “any actual data pointing at the committal of any crime”, but only expresses disagreement with the rulings of an official. That is why our crime report was accepted only as an application for which the investigators are not obliged even to perform a pre-investigative check, let alone a full-fledged investigation. Of course, we will appeal against this ruling”.