Full analysis: why and why Serebrenikov was arrested. Director Kirill Sererenikov detained on suspicion of fraud Public people did not stand aside

About the arrest of director Kirill Serebrennikov. The artistic director of the Gogol Center was detained as a suspect in organizing the theft of at least 68 million rubles allocated in 2011–2014. for the theater project "Platform".

“His actions are qualified by the investigation under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud on an especially large scale),” reports the ICR website. The investigation is going to bring charges against him and ask the court to choose a preventive measure for him.

“After Serebrennikov is interrogated, the investigation may apply to the court to select a preventive measure in the form of arrest or house arrest,” an informed source told TASS. He admitted that this could happen as early as August 22.

Serebrennikov was detained in St. Petersburg, where he was filming the film “Summer” about Viktor Tsoi, and taken to Moscow to the Investigative Committee. This was told to Dozhd by the director’s lawyer Dmitry Kharitonov. Journalist Mikhail Idov, who wrote the script for the film “Summer” and is involved in the work on the film, told Dozhd that on Monday there were no prerequisites for the arrest. Serebrennikov was taken to the Investigative Committee in Moscow, confirmed RBC source in the central office of the committee. According to him, the detention will first be formalized, and then the interrogation will begin.

Lawyer Kharitonov himself also hurriedly returns to Moscow. He told the Moscow agency that his client would not testify without him. His lawyer learned about the director’s arrest when an Investigative Committee investigator called him at 10.30 and said that Serebrennikov had already been taken to the Investigative Committee for investigative actions. “Since he was in St. Petersburg and filming a movie - he’s been doing it there for almost a month - naturally, it was a complete surprise,” Kharitonov said on Kommersant FM. “Before that, we were at the Investigative Committee twice for investigative actions, we just came when called - no problems arose. Why all this has been done now is absolutely unclear.”

Testimony against director Kirill Serebrennikov, whom the Investigative Committee is going to accuse of organizing the theft of 68 million rubles. budget funds, was given not only by the former chief accountant of the Seventh Studio, Nina Maslyaeva. According to an informed TASS source, there are testimonies from other persons in the case and Maslyaeva’s testimonies were not key. According to him, the investigation has collected “sufficient grounds” for Serebrennikov’s status to change from a witness to a suspect.” It was previously reported that accountant Maslyaeva gave a confession to the investigation. She's under arrest. On August 9, her testimony was read out in the Moscow City Court, in which she admitted to cashing.

“According to the case materials, testimony about Serebrennikov’s involvement in the theft of budget funds was given both by the former chief accountant of the Seventh Studio, Nina Maslyaeva, who admitted guilt, and by accounting department employee Tatyana Zhirikova, a witness in the case, as well as other persons,” said an Interfax source ", who saw the case materials. According to him, “this testimony, together with other evidence, became the basis for bringing Serebrennikov to criminal responsibility.”

Commenting on Serebrennikov’s detention, State Secretary - Deputy Minister of Culture Alexander Zhuravsky told TASS that the Ministry of Culture “even at previous stages” helped law enforcement agencies in the case of theft of budget funds for the Platform project, and provided all available materials. According to him, the ministry has not received any new requests from the investigation. He learned about the director’s arrest from journalists.

The Gogol Center said: RBC, that they only recently learned about the detention of their artistic director. Serebrennikov’s first deputy, Alexey Kabeshev, was unable to comment on the situation. Yulia Kalinina, deputy artistic director for finance, will act as head of the Gogol Center. This was told to Interfax by the press service of the Moscow Department of Culture, which is in charge of the theater. According to the agency’s interlocutor, Kalinina has been acting as head since August 1, when Kirill Serebrenikov went on vacation.

The director of the Bolshoi Theater, Vladimir Urin, told TASS that he proposes to first wait for the court’s verdict and then draw conclusions. Including making decisions about the premiere of the ballet “Nureyev”, which Serebrennikov staged for the Bolshoi Theater. The premiere of the ballet was unexpectedly canceled a few days before the scheduled date, because Urin considered the production unprepared.

Oleg Kazakovtsev, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Science, Education and Culture, told RIA Novosti that it makes no sense to comment on anything before the trial. The first deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Culture, Joseph Kobzon, said that there is nothing to comment on here, only the Investigative Committee can do this. “When things like this happen, on the one hand, they cause outrage as to why creative workers [are detained]. On the other hand, creative workers cannot break the law,” RIA Novosti quotes him as saying. Another deputy chairman of the committee, communist and director Yuri Bortko, promised RIA to monitor developments and himself complained about censorship, because of which he has not been able to make a film about Donbass for three years. According to him, if Serebrennikov is “accused of some kind of ideological violations or, God forbid, political crimes,” here he will fight to the death, defending this “wonderful director.” He refused to comment on financial violations.

Animator Yuri Norshtein told RIA Novosti that he does not believe that a person who is creative and so talented “will exchange money for promises.” Member of the Presidential Human Rights Council Nikolai Svanidze considers the detention of Serebrennikov unlawful and demonstrative. He told Interfax that the detention of a world-famous director instead of a systemic fight against corruption makes a strange impression both in the country itself and abroad and “will have very serious consequences for general atmosphere in our country".

In the case of the theft of budget funds allocated for the Platform project, the director was questioned as a witness on May 23. Prior to this, searches were carried out at the Gogol Center, during which actors and other theater employees were kept in the hall, forbidden to call their loved ones. Dozhd, citing a source in the security forces, reported that investigators wanted to seek Serebrennikov’s arrest, but received instructions from above not to touch him after high-ranking officials and politicians, including those from the government, stood up for him.

On May 24, after the state awards ceremony, actor and artistic director of the Theater of Nations Yevgeny Mironov told Vladimir Putin about the performance organized by the Investigative Committee. “They’re fools,” the president said in response to Mironov’s question about why these searches were necessary. He later explained to reporters that he did not see anything smart in searches in the theater with force support.

At the end of May, the Investigative Committee reported that searches at the Gogol Center were carried out in connection with the theft of budget funds in 2014 allocated to the ANO Seventh Studio. ANO is a theater troupe created by Serebrennikov in 2012 on the basis of his own acting and directing course at the Moscow Art Theater School. Until now, the defendants in the case have been former general producer of the Seventh Studio Alexey Malobrodsky, its former director Yuri Itin and chief accountant Nina Maslyaeva. Maslyaeva admits guilt and gives evidence.

Malobrodsky, Itin and Maslyaeva are accused of embezzling budget funds allocated for the “Platform” theater project. On June 21, in court, Malobrodsky was accused of stealing money allocated for the play “Dream in summer night”, which, according to the prosecution, was never staged. The defendant's lawyer, Yulia Lakhova, pointed out that the play was staged, was performed several times and there were numerous reviews of it. To this, the prosecutor noted that “anything can be written,” and the court listened to the prosecution, Dozhd reported.

Serebrennikov via Facebook called on viewers to help him prove “that the Platform project really happened,” although “the 100 posters of original events we made over three years may not convince those we need to convince.” He invited the public to submit evidence - memories and impressions from the productions of the Seventh Studio, especially from the play A Midsummer Night's Dream. The performance was again included in the studio's repertoire.

In early August, the director unexpectedly informed the Sueddeutsche Zeitung that his passport had been taken away, although he was only a witness in the case. He expressed bewilderment that he needed to go to Stuttgart in September to work on a production of Engelbert Humperdinck's opera Hans and Gretel, but expressed hope that everything would work out. Sueddeutsche Zeitung then recalled that the premiere of Serebrennikov’s production of “Nureyev” at the Bolshoi Theater was also recently cancelled. When asked whether Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky was behind all these troubles, the director replied that this was already speculation, “maybe Medinsky, maybe someone else” and he prefers not to think about it for now. He also noted that now in Russia there are “more crazy people who, on behalf of government agencies or religion, attack culture,” and added that “when the Minister of Culture Medinsky advocates in the provinces for the opening of a monument to Stalin, this speaks volumes.” “I can’t say anything more, unfortunately. If it was only about me, I could speak more frankly,” Serebrennikov said.

At the very beginning of June, the Ministry of Culture confirmed that it had asked the Investigative Committee to prosecute those responsible for the theft of money allocated to the Seventh Studio for the Platform project. The ministry’s response to Dozhd’s request stated that the letter to the Investigative Committee signed by Deputy Minister Nikolai Malakov, which was leaked to social networks and the media, was signed “after numerous reports about the actions of the investigative authorities had spread in the information space.” August 9 RBC reported, referring to the investigation materials presented to the Moscow City Court, that the case of the theft of state subsidies was initiated back in 2015, it follows from the case materials, at the end of June 2017 it was transferred from the Moscow department of the Investigative Committee to the central office of the committee.

An Interfax source explained that Serebrennikov’s passport was seized during searches at the end of May and sent for examination to check the authenticity of the document. According to the agency’s interlocutor, “these investigative actions are only a reason not to release the director abroad.”

MOSCOW, August 22 – RIA Novosti. Investigators on Tuesday charged the famous director and artistic director of the capital's Gogol Center theater, Kirill Serebrennikov, with fraud on an especially large scale. The filing of charges was preceded by the detention of Serebrennikov in St. Petersburg on the set of a film about Viktor Tsoi on suspicion of organizing the theft of at least 68 million rubles allocated for the Platform project in 2011-2014. The cultural figure himself did not admit guilt during interrogation by the Investigative Committee of Russia, and the Basmanny Court is expected to decide on the issue of choosing a preventive measure for him on Wednesday, August 23.

Back in May, law enforcement officers conducted searches at the Gogol Center and Serebrennikov’s house as part of a case of theft of government funds in the non-profit organization Seventh Studio, which he founded. Meanwhile, many public figures did not remain aloof from what was happening and expressed their opinion regarding the detention of Serebrennikov.

The director became the accused

The official representative of the Russian Investigative Committee, Svetlana Petrenko, told reporters on Tuesday that director Kirill Serebrennikov was charged with fraud on an especially large scale, and during interrogation he did not admit guilt.

“The artistic director of the Moscow Gogol Center theater, Kirill Serebrennikov, was charged with... fraud on an especially large scale... During interrogation as an accused, he did not admit his guilt,” she said.

This is not the first such situation related to Serebrennikov and the Gogol Center. Back in May, law enforcement officers conducted searches in the theater and Serebrennikov’s house as part of a case of theft of government funds in the Seventh Studio, which he founded. According to the investigation, the Russian Ministry of Culture allocated about 70 million rubles to the Seventh Studio for performances and tours. The accused, according to investigators, stole money with the help of fictitious documents about the organization of the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

Currently under arrest are the ex-director of the Gogol Center Alexei Malobrodsky, the former accountant of the Seventh Studio Nina Maslyaeva, and its ex-general director Yuri Itin is under house arrest.

Serebrennikov has headed the Gogol Center since 2012. This year the director was awarded one of the most prestigious awards in the field of theatrical art - “Europe - a new theatrical reality”, the award will be presented in December in Rome.

Preventive measure for an artist

Serebrennikov's lawyer Dmitry Kharitonov told RIA Novosti that his client was detained in St. Petersburg, where he was filming a film, and taken to Moscow, accompanied by security forces. The defense lawyer said that at the time of his arrest he was on a business trip in Vladimir, from where he left by the first train.

At about 2 p.m., the lawyer arrived at the Investigative Committee, and in his presence the interrogation of Serebrennikov began, which lasted almost four hours. All the time that Serebrennikov was in the Investigative Committee in Moscow, a large number of journalists were near the department building, who were waiting for further developments. The press also gathered near the Gogol Center after Serebrennikov’s arrest; the theater itself was closed.

At the end of the interrogation, the director’s lawyer said that a preventive measure for Serebrennikov would be chosen on Wednesday, August 23, in the Basmanny Court.

“Apparently, he was taken to the first detention center. He was charged under Article 159 Part 4, he did not admit guilt. Tomorrow at 12.00 the Basmanny court will decide on the preventive measure,” Kharitonov said.

According to him, Serebrennikov believes that the accusation is absolutely absurd. “The “platform” was a project that took place,” the lawyer added.

What about Tsoi?

As the director’s lawyer clarified, Serebrennikov was in St. Petersburg at the time of his arrest filming a film about Viktor Tsoi. Filming a picture about little known facts biographies of the famous rock musician began in St. Petersburg at the end of July. The script for the film was written by Mikhail and Lily Idov.

The film company Hype Film and producers Ilya Stewart, Mikhail Finogenov and Murad Osmann are working on the project. Rental is scheduled for 2018. The film will feature songs by Viktor Tsoi, as well as the music of Western rock musicians, which influenced the formation of Russian rock.

The screenwriter of the project and former editor-in-chief of GQ magazine Mikhail Idov reported on his Facebook page that Serebrennikov’s new film about Tsoi is two-thirds completed, and its filming will be completed no matter what.

“The brilliant Kirill Serebrennikov has been arrested. I can’t believe it - Lily Idova and I were on set just the day before yesterday. He was in a great mood and all about work,” he wrote.

According to him, “in the end, all that the state will achieve is to deprive Russia of another talented person.”

© Ruptly

Public people did not stand aside

Russian public figures did not remain aloof from the events taking place. Former Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation, head of the board of the Center for Strategic Research Foundation, deputy chairman of the Economic Council under the President, Alexei Kudrin, believes that the investigation should not arrest Serebrennikov.

“The arrest of the director is clearly an excessive measure before the trial, especially after the president’s words about the excessiveness of arrests of entrepreneurs,” Kudrin wrote on his microblog on Twitter.

The famous animator Yuri Norshtein expressed his support for Serebrennikov. According to him, he does not believe that such a talented person could be the organizer of the theft Money.

First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Culture, People's Artist of Russia Iosif Kobzon considers it premature to comment on the detention famous director Kirill Serebrennikov, but I am sure that creative people should not break the law.

The first deputy chairman of the committee, director Vladimir Bortko (Communist Party of the Russian Federation), indicated that the committee will monitor the Serebrennikov case.

“As for taking control, helping, of course (needed - ed). But here we need to divide it into two parts. If he is accused of some kind of ideological violations or, God forbid, political crimes, then here I will stand to the death, so that they don't touch the wonderful director Serebrennikov. As for financial violations, if I were an accountant, I would comment on them. But since I am not an accountant or an investigator, I cannot comment," Bortko told RIA Novosti.

Russian writer, publicist and political figure Eduard Limonov, in turn, believes that if the Investigative Committee of Russia decided to detain director Kirill Serebrennikov, then the Investigative Committee has evidence of his guilt. According to Limonov, if a person steals, he must be punished, and it does not matter what position he holds.

The head of the Union of Theater Workers (STD), Alexander Kalyagin, vouched for Serebrennikov to the Investigative Committee, asking to change his preventive measure. “The Chairman of the Union of Artists of the Russian Federation A.A. Kalyagin appealed to the Investigative Committee with a personal guarantee in connection with the detention of the artistic director of the Gogol Center K.S. Serebrennikov,” says a message on the union’s website.

Who will retain the Gogol Center?

The situation regarding the question of who will replace Serebrennikov in the theater during his detention was clarified by the head of the Moscow Department of Culture, Alexander Kibovsky. According to him, the duties of the head are now performed by Deputy for Finance Yulia Kalinina. According to Kibovsky, there are currently no plans to appoint another candidate.

Kirill Serebrennikov

Today, August 22, Russian media with reference to the Investigative Committee, they reported that a theater director and artistic director of the Gogol Center was detained in St. Petersburg in a fraud case. According to investigators, the director stole 68 million rubles allocated for his experimental theater "Platform" from 2011 to 2014.

About the scandal associated with this Serebrennikov project, May 23. First, the former general director and chief accountant of the Seventh Studio company, Yuri Itin and Nina Maslyaeva, were detained. “Platform” actively collaborated with this company, and, as the investigation suggests, funds passed through it, which were subsequently stolen.

Maslyaeva later stated that this project was created for the “realization of criminal intent” - the theft of budget funds allocated for its development. In May, Serebrennikov was involved in the case only as a witness.

The case against Kiril Serebrennikov was initiated under Part 4 of Article 159, which provides for punishment in the form of imprisonment for up to 10 years. An Interfax source reports that the director could be imprisoned in a pre-trial detention center or placed under house arrest. Kirill Serebrennikov’s foreign passport was taken away on August 7.

According to him, the director had the intention to leave the territory of the Russian Federation in the near future. This was possible thanks to a residence permit in the Republic of Latvia and an apartment in Berlin, says a representative of the Investigative Committee. The witnesses in the case are the director's former subordinates. According to investigators, he can influence them, “including threatening them.” Thus, the daughters of accountant Maslyaeva have already been subjected to surveillance and pressure from Serebrennikov’s subordinates, the investigator claims.

“The amount of theft in the case will increase. Currently, we have not yet completed all the examinations,” said a member of the investigation team.

At the beginning of the hearing, lawyer Dmitry Kharitonov asked the court to include in the case materials personal guarantees for Serebrennikov, signed by Natalya Solzhenitsyn, director of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Foundation Tretyakov Gallery Zelfira Tregulova, general director of the Bolshoi Theater Vladimir Urin, head of the Vera Foundation Nyuta Federmesser, singer Philip Kirkorov and many other public and cultural figures.

The investigation's response that Serebrennikov refused to testify is not entirely correct, the lawyer said. “He was detained early in the morning in St. Petersburg and taken to Moscow for eight hours. When at 14:00 I arrived at the Investigative Committee and the interrogation began, Serebrennikov only said that he had neither the moral nor the physical strength to read and comprehend the multi-page accusation,” Kharitonov said and added that, according to Serebrennikov, the accusation it was “incomprehensible” to him. Mention of the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was missing from the new charges brought against the defendants in the case by the central office of the Investigative Committee at the end of July, the lawyer said. Previously, the investigation's version was that the Seventh Studio embezzled money for the play and it was not staged. Now the mechanism of theft is not specified in any way: “It is impossible to defend against such an accusation.”

“I would like, of course, to be released, because I am not guilty. The charges brought against me seem incredible, absurd, impossible,” Serebrennikov told the court. “I have no intention of running away: I showed up at any call and told the whole truth - that the Platform project existed, budget money was spent only on it and I am very proud of it. All the people involved worked conscientiously.” According to the director, he “never suspected or accused” the Seventh Studio employees who were responsible for the economy.

The accused confirmed that he asked the investigation to return the seized international passport, since he needed to go to Germany for an opera production in Stuttgart. “This only concerned my contractual obligations. I had no intention of hiding,” he added.

Serebrennikov’s defense is ready to post bail for him, corresponding to the amount of damage in the case - 68 million rubles, said lawyer Kharitonov. “It’s clear that we personally don’t have that kind of money. But I think that if we go outside now, we will quickly collect them,” the defender clarified. At his request, directors Andrei Smirnov and Alexey Mizgirev, as well as publisher Irina Prokhorova, were questioned at the trial, and they gave a characterization of Serebrennikov’s personality.

Kirill Serebrennikov (Photo: Anton Kardashov / Moscow Agency)

“This case, in my opinion, is absolutely exaggerated. And what the investigator said here characterizes not Serebrennikov, but the work of our Investigative Committee,” exclaimed Smirnov. “I have no reason to doubt Serebrennikov’s professional integrity. In general, to see him behind bars and the fact that they brought him here in handcuffs is outrageous.” According to him, just the list of cultural figures who vouched for the director “is enough to understand where the truth and goodness are here.”

“He leads a rather modest life, which is subordinated to one thing - his work. I know Kirill as a very honest person; I myself staged a play at the Gogol Center and I know that the work there is built on full inclusion - emotional, creative. Apart from work, nothing else exists for people there,” Mizgirev said.

“From my point of view, Serebrennikov is an outstanding director and theater figure. And he is, this is an indisputable fact, the pride of our country. His project made Russia a leading theatrical power. I can say that this is a crystal honest person whose purpose in life is creativity. Pardon the pun, but he is an absolute unmercenary. And I'm ready to make any deposit to really great person I wasn’t in a pre-trial detention center,” Prokhorova summed up.

The meeting took place to the sound of applause and shouts from Kalanchevskaya Street - hundreds of his supporters came to the courthouse to support the director.

Detention of Serebrennikov

The director early in the morning of August 22 in a St. Petersburg hotel, he was in the city filming his film about Viktor Tsoi. Serebrennikov was taken to Moscow, where, following interrogation at the central office of the Investigative Committee, he was charged with organizing fraud.

According to the investigation, in 2011 Serebrennikov came up with and developed a project for the development and popularization of contemporary art “Platform”, for which in 2011-2014 the Ministry of Culture allocated more than 214 million rubles. To implement the project, the director created the independent non-profit organization “Seventh Studio”. The company’s employees provided the Ministry of Culture with “action plans within the framework of the Platform project, which contained deliberately unreliable, inflated information about their quantity and cost,” drew up false reports, as well as fictitious contracts for work that were not actually carried out, according to the Investigative Committee. The defendants in the case transferred budgetary compensation for these works to the accounts of shell companies and cashed them out, and then Serebrennikov distributed them among the participants in the scheme, investigators are convinced.

The Seventh Studio case

The case of fraud with state subsidies to the Seventh Studio company was initiated back in 2015, but it became known only after, at Serebrennikov’s house and at several other addresses. Earlier, the Investigative Committee brought charges against Seventh Studio accountant Nina Maslyaeva, former director of Gogol Center Alexey Malobrodsky and ex-general director of Seventh Studio Yuri Itin.

Serebrennikov until recently remained in the status of a witness along with several other company employees, as well as the former head of the state support department of the Ministry of Culture, Sofia Apfelbaum. The country's leadership decided to abandon criminal prosecution of him, citing sources close to officials and the director himself. However, after searches and interrogation in May, Serebrennikov’s passport was confiscated, he himself told the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

At the beginning of August it became known that Maslyaeva. According to the protocol of her interrogation, Itin, Serebrennikov and Malobrodsky created the Seventh Studio ANO “to carry out criminal intent.” The accountant helped them cash out the subsidy from the state; The defendants in the case disposed of the cash at their own discretion, Maslyaeva told the investigation. Previously, she stated that in total, at least 100 million rubles had been withdrawn from the Seventh Studio account since 2014. in favor of fly-by-night companies. Maslyaeva's daughters, meanwhile, as they assumed, were from Serebrennikov's former colleagues and associates.

Initially, individual defendants in the case were charged with fraud in smaller amounts: they were accused of stealing 2.3 million rubles allocated for the production of the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and that they, together with unidentified persons, prepared false reports on work for 1. 2 million rubles, which were not actually carried out.

At the end of June, the investigation of the case was entrusted to the central office of the Investigative Committee. On July 25, a new charge was brought against the accused. In it, the essence of the act that the defendants are charged with is not specified, Malobrodsky’s lawyer, Ksenia Karpinskaya, explained to journalists. “It simply says that they worked in the Seventh Studio and spent public money. How exactly is not specified,” the defender said.

The Investigative Committee reported that the director will be charged in the near future

Artistic director of the Gogol Center Kirill Serebrennikov

Moscow. August 22. website - Investigators detained director Kirill Serebrennikov on suspicion of organizing the theft of 68 million rubles allocated for the implementation of the Platform project, said the official representative of the Investigative Committee, Svetlana Petrenko. According to an Interfax source, arrest or house arrest may be chosen as a preventive measure.

“The Main Directorate for Investigation of Particularly Important Cases of the Investigative Committee on suspicion of organizing the theft of at least 68 million rubles allocated in 2011-2014 for the implementation of the Platform project detained the artistic director of the Gogol Center theater Kirill Serebrennikov,” Petrenko said in a statement. Tuesday to Interfax.

She added that the investigation classifies his actions under Part 4 of Article 159 (fraud on an especially large scale). In the near future, the director will be charged and the issue of choosing a preventive measure will be decided.

On August 11, a source close to the director told Interfax that the Investigative Committee had ordered an examination of the foreign passport of Gogol Center artistic director Kirill Serebrennikov, as a result of which he could not travel abroad.

“As we know, the investigation is conducting an examination of Serebrennikov’s foreign passport, which was seized from him during searches at the end of May this year,” the agency’s interlocutor said. According to him, “we can talk about a technical and forensic examination, the purpose of which is to establish the authenticity of the document.”

Meanwhile, according to the source, “these investigative actions are only a reason not to release the director abroad.” Serebrennikov actively collaborates with foreign theaters. At the beginning of August, the director told reporters that in September he was to stage Engelbert Humperdinck's opera Hansel and Gretel in Stuttgart.

According to investigators, from 2011 to 2014, the management of the Seventh Studio stole several tens of millions of rubles of budget funds allocated for the development and popularization of art. One of the projects, according to the Investigative Committee, was the allegedly unstaged play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The amount of damage, according to the investigation, in this episode is more than 2.3 million rubles. The defense of the defendants has repeatedly stated that this performance was staged.

There are currently three defendants in the case: former accountant of the Seventh Studio Nina Maslyaeva, ex-general director of the studio Yuri Itin and former general producer of the enterprise, ex-director of the Gogol Center Alexey Malobrodsky. The founder of the Seventh Studio, Serebrennikov, is in the status of a witness.

Meanwhile, on August 9 it became known that Maslyaeva testified against Serebreniikov, Malobrodsky and Itin.

“Itin, Serebrennikov, Malobrodsky developed a plan to steal funds allocated for the Platform project (...) Itin, Serebrennikov and Malobrodsky, with my help, cashed out the funds allocated for the project. Subsequently, in the financial statements by year, I, in agreement with they included deliberately false data,” follows from the protocol of Maslyaeva’s interrogation, published in the Moscow City Court when considering a complaint about the extension of the preventive measure for the defendants.

On August 18, the Basmanny Court of Moscow left Malobrodsky and Maslyaeva under arrest until October 19, and Itin under house arrest until the same date. All defendants appealed the court ruling.

At the end of July, Malobrodsky, Maslyaeva and Itin were charged with fraud on an especially large scale (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). At the same time, according to the lawyer of the ex-general director of the Gogol Center, Ksenia Karpinskaya, the damage in the case is currently estimated by the investigation at 68 million rubles, but the essence of the accusation remains unknown, since the case materials do not yet contain any specific episodes at all.

Previously, A. Malobrodsky was only charged with theft of more than 2.3 million rubles during the production of the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which, according to the investigation, was ultimately not staged. The defendant's lawyers, in turn, claim that the existence of the performance is a well-known fact. Itin and Maslyaeva were accused of stealing 1.286 million rubles when purchasing props for organizing a theater festival.

Malobrodsky and Itin deny their guilt, Maslyaeva admitted her guilt in full and entered into a pre-trial agreement. The period for the preliminary investigation in the case has been extended until October 19. Many cultural figures spoke out in support of those involved in the Seventh Studio case.