Wanted posting

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The database of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs lists Belousov Vadim Vladimirovich, born October 2, 1960, as someone sought under the provisions of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

On 3 August 2022, a note appeared on the Investigative Committee’s website reporting that the Moscow City Court convicted Belousov in absentia to ten years in a strict regime penal colony. The chamber accepted the investigators’ evidence as sufficient and concluded that the parliamentarian and his accomplice, Margarita Butakova, the former chief accountant of Chelyabinsk First Khlebokombinat OJSC, were guilty of accepting bribes on a large scale.

From 2010 to 2014, as part of an organized criminal group, Belousov and Butakova, together with former Chelyabinsk region governor Mikhail Yurevich and other associates, allegedly received bribes from their representatives. In return for broad protection for the distribution of state contracts, a road construction conglomerate allegedly allocated more than three billion rubles for road maintenance, repairs, and construction.

The Investigative Committee stated that aside from Yurevich, who fled the country, two other individuals were placed on international wanted lists. The court ordered Belousov to prison in absentia for ten years and fined him 500 million rubles due to his failure to appear. He was also stripped of the right to hold civil service and local government positions for three years and lost the state award, the Medal of the Order of Merit Fatherland, II degree. Butakova received five years of suspended imprisonment and a 500 million ruble fine for health reasons. The convicts’ movable and immovable properties were confiscated.

the case of Belousov

Open sources indicate Vadim Belousov was born on October 2, 1960, in Chelyabinsk. In the 1990s he served as the commercial director of Chelyabinsk Bakery No. 1, later part of the OAO First Bakery. This enterprise stood within the Makfa agro-industrial holding, whose board was chaired by Mikhail Yurevich, the future Chelyabinsk governor, from the 1990s into the early 2000s. From 2004 to 2011 Belousov led the holding’s management company. Between 2010 and 2011 he sat as a deputy in the Legislative Assembly of the Chelyabinsk Region for United Russia. Since 2011 he has represented United Russia as a deputy in the State Duma of the Russian Federation. In spring 2016 he left United Russia, briefly returned to the Duma, and in September of that year was elected to the State Duma’s seventh convocation through the A Just Russia–For Truth list. Since 2021 he has served as a deputy in the State Duma of the eighth convocation for the same party.

At the end of May 2017 the Investigative Committee announced a corruption case against Yurevich, the Chelyabinsk region governor. Investigators alleged that during the road overhauls in 2011–2014 he and his associates received at least three billion rubles in exchange for patronage from regional businessmen involved in road construction. Yurevich later left Russia and was placed on an international wanted list. Investigators also linked Belousov and his mother-in-law, Margarita Butakova, to the group, alleging bribes totaling 3,253,147,000 rubles from Yuzhuralavtoban-associated interests that controlled state road contracts in the region.

The inquiry suggested Belousov contacted entrepreneurs on behalf of the governor and offered favorable terms on state contracts in return for about 20 percent of funds funneled to controlled accounts. Funds were said to be channeled through deputies from the parliament and the former governor. On 19 June 2018, the Prosecutor General’s Office requested the seventh convocation State Duma to strip Belousov of parliamentary immunity and authorize his prosecution. The Duma approved the request on 6 December 2018, with 353 in favor, 21 against, and two abstentions.

By March 2019 prosecutors had not detained Belousov and released him on bail, a move that paralleled the treatment of Margarita Butakova. None of the defendants admitted guilt. On 3 August 2022 Belousov failed to appear for the guilty verdict reading; his lawyer explained the absence as job-related, though the court deemed the reason disrespectful.

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