14 April 2026
Anti-corruption lawsuits initiated by the chair of the Supreme Court are targeting an increasingly wide range of officials
By Leonid Nikitinsky
Source: Novaya Gazeta
As reported by RBK, the Prosecutor General’s Office has filed a lawsuit seeking the seizure of 23 million roubles in assets from Galina Chernova, chair of the Krasnodar region Notary Chamber. This report is doubly interesting: Galina Chernova is the ex-wife of Aleksandr Chernov, chair of Krasnodar Regional Court. On the other hand, this is the first precedent of an anti-corruption lawsuit being filed against a notary as a person endowed with certain official authorities.
The Chernovs’ daughters — Elena Ryazanskaya, vice president of the Notary Chamber, and Anastasia Shepel, a judge of Krasnodar Region Court of Arbitration — are also named as defendants in the anti-corruption lawsuit.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the former wife and daughter helped the head of the regional court register property in their own names and those of other relatives. Local sources add that the data of 432 deceased residents of the region were allegedly used to create chains of fictitious transactions.
This is not the first time we have encountered Galina Chernova. She played a key role in the story of the hostile takeover of plots of land belonging to the former Kavkaz collective farm. As chair of the Notary Chamber, Chernova provided an incorrect interpretation stating that an owner of a share in privatized land could bequeath it even if the land had not been physically divided up. This interpretation subsequently allowed other undivided shares to be acquired in the course of hostile takeovers and to force Andrei Kalinin, the farmer who had been cultivating the land of the former Kavkaz collective farm, off the property (see the ‘Leviathan-South’ investigation in issue No. 49 of Novaya gazeta dated May 14, 2018).
Along with the lawsuit seeking to transfer the property of Chernova and Ryazanskaya to the state, the Prosecutor General’s Office is demanding that they and two other notaries in the region be barred from practicing notarial activities. But why does this apply only to future transactions? Transactions, including those related to wills, previously certified by these notaries, should also be subject to a legal review. At the very least, such transactions are subject to challenge by interested parties. As we have pointed out on numerous occasions, court rulings which may have been influenced by corrupt court officials should also be subject to review.
The anti-corruption efforts of the new chair of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, Igor Krasnov, can only be welcomed. However, there is a certain, shall we say, ambiguity in the fact that anti-corruption lawsuits, replete with evidence of crimes by public officials, are not being converted into prosecutions.
Translated by Rights in Russia
