Ex-CEO of Russia’s VIM Airlines sentenced but released

Alexander Kochnev, a former chief executive of VIM Airlines (NN, Moscow Domodedovo), has been sentenced at a court in Moscow to three years and eight months hard labour in a penal colony for alleged fraud. However, as he had already spent this time in detention and under house arrest, the judge ordered his release. Meshchansky District Court in the Russian capital also handed the now-bankrupt carrier’s former chief accountant, Yekaterina Panteleyeva, a prison sentence of three years and six months but she was released too, the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI) reported. In addition, Kochnev was ordered to pay a fine amounting to RUB600,000 rubles (USD8,350). The owners of the company, Rashid Mursekayev and his wife Svetlana, are believed to be hiding abroad having been placed on the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation’s international wanted list in December 2017 and November 2020, respectively. Vice president and financial director Alevtina Kalashnikova has also been put on the wanted list and arrested in absentia as part of the case. Investigators believe that between 2015 and 2017, the defendants abused their positions by purchasing aviation fuel from Mursekayev’s other companies at inflated prices and that VIM Airlines had been created as a pyramid scheme. The carrier’s management allegedly covered up material losses by adding false earnings data to the financial statements, giving them the opportunity to obtain bank loans and avoid attention from Russia’s civil aviation regulator (Rosaviatsia). Damages to the company are estimated to have reached RUB2.5 billion rubles (USD35 million) by September 2017, the investigators claim, and damages to VIM Airlines’ corporate counterparties exceeded RUB782 million (USD10.9 million). VIM Airlines collapsed in October 2017 with debts totalling around RUB15 billion (USD235 million at the time) and was formally declared bankrupt in September 2018.