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Moscow City Court releases theater director Serebrennikov on his own recognizance

Apart from Serebrennikov, producer Yuri Itin and former Culture Ministry official Sofia Apfelbaum have also been released on their own recognizance
Kirill Serebrennikov  Gavriil Grigorov/TASS
Kirill Serebrennikov
© Gavriil Grigorov/TASS

MOSCOW, April 8. /TASS/. The Moscow City Court has released theater director Kirill Serebrennikov and another two defendants in public funds embezzlement case on their own recognizance, a TASS correspondent reported.

"The previous decision, made by a court of first instance, is hereby revised and the defense’s appeal is granted," the Court’s judge said.

Apart from Serebrennikov, producer Yuri Itin and former Culture Ministry official Sofia Apfelbaum have also been released on their own recognizance.

Serebrennikov case

On October 25, 2018, Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court started to consider the Serebrennikov case on its own merits. Apart from Serebrennikov, Itin and Sofia Apfelbaum, producer Alexei Malobrodsky is also among the defendants. A case against the former chief accountant of the Sedmaya Studiya (or Seventh Studio) non-commercial organization, Nina Maslyaeva, will be heard separately as she has made a plea deal.

According to investigators, in 2011, Kirill Serebrennikov launched a project called Platforma (or Platform) in order to develop and promote modern art. In 2011-2014, the Russian Culture Ministry allocated over 214 mln rubles ($3.2 mln) for the project. Serebrennikov established an autonomous non-commercial organization Sedmaya Studiya (or Seventh Studio) to implement the project, hiring a number of his acquaintances, including Alexei Malobrodsky, Yuri Itin, Yekaterina Voronova and Nina Maslyayeva, to work there.

Detectives believe that in 2011-2014, Malobrodsky, Voronova and Maslyayeva developed annual event plans within the Platform project upon the instructions of Serebrennikov and Itin, deliberately using false data about the number and the cost of the events. They provided those plans to the Culture Ministry to justify budget financing. They also made up performance reports to present to the ministry, which proved that the budget allowances received by the Seventh Studio had been fully spent on the planned activities. The investigation believes that a total of 130 mln rubles ($1.98 mln) was embezzled from the federal budget in this manner.