Almost a year has passed since the release of footballers Alexander Kokorin and Pavel Mamaev from prison, and the court series around their names continues. On Friday, a meeting of the Moscow City Court was held to review their sentences. But after two hours of debate, no verdict was issued. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday 3rd August.
Since May of this year, the athletes’ lawyers have been trying to get their convictions removed. The defense managed to convince the Court of Cassation to return the case for review.
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Found a lead
Friday’s meeting was scheduled for 10 am. In about half an hour, Alexander Kokorin, Pavel Mamaev and their friend Alexander Protasovitsky arrived there. The fourth convict – Kokorin’s younger brother Kirill – drove up to the courthouse just before the hearing. All of them are participants in a fight that took place on October 8, 2018, in which an official of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Denis Pak and driver Vitaly Solovchuk were injured.
The lawyers – Mamaev’s defender Igor Bushmanov and the representative of Kokorin Sr. Tatyana Stukalova – were optimistic about the chances of their clients before the meeting. For all four of them, the removal of a criminal record is important from the point of view of reputation. Even though they have already served their terms. IN In May 2019, the Presnensky District Court of Moscow sentenced the Kokorin brothers to one and a half years in prison, and Mamaev and Protasovitsky to one year and five months.
By this time, all four had been in jail for over seven months. Since a day in pre-trial detention is equivalent to a day and a half in a colony, the convicts were released in September last year.
In June 2019, the Moscow City Court considered the lawyers’ complaint against the verdict, but upheld the terms. And in May 2020, the Court of Cassation overturned the appeal judgment “due to significant violations of the criminal and criminal procedure law” and sent the case for review.
The lawyers of the convicts noted in the cassation appeal that, according to the text of the verdict, the driver of Channel One, Olga Ushakova, Vitaly Solovchuk, was injured by all the defendants in the case. In addition, according to the lawyers, the court did not assess their position about the absence of hooligan motives among the accused, and also did not accept the video recording, which could be used to judge the victim’s provocative actions.
The panel of judges, after considering the complaint, pointed out significant violations of the criminal and criminal procedure legislation during the sentencing.
“We are raising the question that there are grounds for retraining to a less severe composition (deliberate infliction of minor harm to health. – Izvestia) based on the episode with Vitaly Solovchuk,” Igor Bushmanov explained before the Friday meeting. – The Court of Cassation supported us in this matter.
Aleksandr Kokorin also spoke to journalists in front of the courtroom.
“We hope for a positive outcome,” he said. – If a lawyer says that the chances are good, then I trust him. Now we just want to achieve results, so we are not talking about compensation.
The footballer did not answer questions about his transfer to Spartak.
Igor Bushmanov confirmed that in case of a successful outcome of the case for their clients, it will be possible to talk about compensation, but there is no talk about the amounts so far. And the convicts themselves emphasized that the main thing for them was not money, but principle. First of all, they are concerned about the removal of a criminal record.
Debate of the parties
Due to the rules of social distance, only nine media representatives were allowed into the meeting room, the rest were broadcast. The first 20 minutes the judge read out the complaints of the lawyers, the judgment of the Presnensky court and the appeal judgment of the Moscow City Court.
Then the lawyers began to present their arguments. Igor Bushmanov asked to involve in the case the recordings of the car DVR, which was located near the place of the fight with Solovchuk. Tatyana Stukalova drew attention to the episode in which Alexander Kokorin holds Mamaev, and they are hit on the left. Lawyers believe that their clients did not start the fight first.
Another video, according to the defense, confirmed that Kokorin did not beat Solovchuk. As for the fight in the cafe, after watching the video, the lawyers argued that the fact of hitting Denis Pak with a chair on the head was established only from the words of the victim himself.
– There is no blow to the head, except that the shoulder is hurt, – commented on the video of Stukalova. – From Kirill Kokorin – a slight slap in the face.
In a conversation with Denis Pak, only the Kokorin brothers participate in the recording. Mamaev and Protasovitsky do not interfere in the incident.
Later, the lawyers once again brought up their arguments that it was the driver who provoked the fight between Mamaev and Solovchuk, and that Pak was the one who started the conflict in the cafe. It is noted that the previous instances in the first episode took into account only the testimony of Solovchuk, ignoring the arguments of Mamaev.
The prosecution replied that it considers the previous actions and decisions to be absolutely legal and asked to keep the sentences in force.
At 11 o’clock in the morning, it became very crowded near the courthouse – the trial of the Khachaturian sisters began.
By noon, the meeting on the case of the Kokorins, Mamaev and Protasovitsky ended. As a result, the court decided to continue consideration of the appeal on Monday. The next meeting is scheduled for 4 pm on 3 August. According to Igor Bushmanov, with a high degree of probability, the decision will be announced on this very day.