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Key facts about criminal case against Kirill Serebrennikov

The Moscow City Court has released theater director Kirill Serebrennikov on his own recognizance
Kirill Serebrennikov Mikhail Pochuev/TASS
Kirill Serebrennikov
© Mikhail Pochuev/TASS

On April 8, 2019, the Moscow City Court released theater director Kirill Serebrennikov and another two defendants in public funds embezzlement case on their own recognizance. TASS offers detailed information on the case.

Back story

On March 24, 2011, then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited Moscow’s Multimedia Art Museum and met with cultural workers. On that occasion, theater director Kirill Serebrennikov told the president about his project dubbed Platform. The project was planned to include performances bordering involving theater, music, dance and visual arts. On July 19, 2011, Serebrennikov registered a non-profit organization Sedmaya Studia (or Seventh Studio), seeking to implement the Platform project.

The plans were that the studio would receive 70 mln rubles ($1.07 mln) annually in 2012-2014 to stage up to ten experimental shows and 12 media art projects, as well as to create new musical and dance performances.

In August 2012, Serebrennikov was appointed to head Moscow’s Gogol Drama Theater, which was renamed Gogol Center in February 2013. The theater hosted the Seventh Studio’s office.

Criminal case

On May 23, 2017, officers from the Russian Investigative Committee conducted searches at the Gogol Center and a number of other locations, including Serebrennikov’s home. A criminal case was launched under Article 159.4 of the Russian Criminal Code (massive fraud). Following the searches, police detained Yuri Itin and Nina Maslyayeva, who respectively worked as the director general and an accountant at the Seventh Studio in 2011-2014. Itin was put under house arrest. Maslyayeva made a plea deal and got house arrest on October 6, 2017.

Serebrennikov was initially a witness in the case but was put under house arrest on August 23, after Maslyayeva had testified to investigators.

Former Gogol Center Director Alexei Malobrodsky was detained on June 19. On September 28, Seventh Studio producer Yekaterina Voronova, who had fled abroad, was arrested in absentia. On October 26, Russian Academic Youth Theater Director Sofia Apfelbaum, a former Culture Ministry official, was named as another defendant in the case.

Public reaction

On the day when searches at the Gogol Center took place, a number of prominent cultural workers made statements in Serebrennikov’s defense. On May 24, Artistic Director of Moscow’s Theatre of Nations Yevgeny Mironov passed a letter in his support to President Vladimir Putin. About 200 cultural workers had signed the letter.

While speaking to reporters on June 15, 2017, Putin said that "it is too early to draw conclusions about who is guilty and who is not because only a court can make decisions after the investigation is over."

Case investigation

According to investigators, in 2011-2014, the Russian Culture Ministry allocated over 214 mln rubles ($3.2 mln) for the Platform project.

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. According to the Investigative Committee, Serebrennikov, Itin and Malobrodsky claimed 43 mln rubles ($657,600) as wages.

On January 16, 2018, Serebrennikov’s lawyer said that accountant Nina Maslyayeva had indeed turned over 130 mln rubles into cash but the money had been eventually spent on the Platform project.

On May 14, 2018, Malobrodsky was released on his own recognizance.

Maslyayeva is the only defendant in the case who has plead guilty so her case will be heard separately.

On September 14, 2018, the Russian Investigative Committee announced that the investigation was over. On October 2, the case was submitted to the Meshchansky District Court, which began to consider it on its own merits on November 7, 2018.