30 June 2023
by Vera Vasilieva
Source: Facebook
Dear friends, in response to your requests and recognizing, obviously, the long overdue need, I have composed a detailed memo on Aleksandr Markin and his criminal case with links to official documents (court verdicts and others). I hope that it will be useful to many. It is given for distribution. Thank you very much for your concern!
On Aleksandr Markin and his criminal case
Aleksandr Alekseevich Markin was born on October 22, 1962 in Donetsk, Ukrainian SSR. He served in the army at the Baikonur cosmodrome in the security battalion. In 1987, he graduated from the Donetsk Institute of Physical Culture and Sports with training as a physical education teacher and boxing coach. He worked as a bodyguard in Moscow, was involved in the security business, and was the general director of the private security company Vityaz-Sport.
In 1995, while on duty, Markin received a severe gunshot wound. According to Markin, a man dressed in a police uniform shot at him. The case was soon closed, never having been investigated, and then it was mislaid, and the medical history inexplicably disappeared from the N. V. Sklifosovsky Institute for Emergency Medicine, where Markin received treatment.
Because of this injury, in 2001, Markin, on the recommendation of doctors, was forced to move with his family to a permanent residence in Spain. According to doctors, he was given continuous monitoring by medical personnel and residence by the seaside with a warm climate (Link to document).
Markin was first arrested on March 20, 2006, in Spain, on charges from the Russian authorities of organizing the murder on December 2, 2002, of the co-owner of the company Optifood (the largest importer of chicken meat to Russia) Mikhail Viunsh and, in 2004, of employee of Optifood Sergei Prosnyakov. The private security company Vityaz-Sport provided security services to Optifood and Viunsh.
On December 2, 2002, Viunsh, along with a driver and a security guard, was blown up in his own car in the Moscow region. Because of this murder and (as the forensic investigation, which is discussed below, showed) the falsified signature of Viunsh on a power of attorney, his shares in the business went to the second owner of Optifood, Ivan Obolentsev. Viunsh supposedly signed this power of attorney (executed, by the way, without his full printed name, which is incorrect) two weeks before his death. The notary who had executed the transfer of the shares to Obolentsev subsequently died unexpectedly. The forensic assessment of Viunsh’s signature on this power of attorney (it was carried out during the second trial of Markin on the initiative of his then-lawyer Dmitri Dinze) showed that in reality what was on the power of attorney was a facsimile, not a real signature. Markin pointed out that the reason for the murder of Viunsh could be Obolentsev’s assumption of multimillion-dollar loans at the IBK bank and his taking sole possession of the murdered man’s business.
Prosnyakov, according to Markin, on the one hand, knew about Obolentsev’s possible involvement in crimes and helped him to “launder” loans, and on the other hand, also claimed a share in the Optifood business.
Markin was extradited to Russia, where, according to him, he was subjected to abusive treatment in Moscow’s pre-trial detention center 4 (known as ‘The Bear’). In particular, he was held for three days in a special cell with a mentally ill person. The cell was on the ground floor; the barred window in it was not glazed. On the street, right outside the cell window, stood a mobile X-ray working around the clock.
Then Markin was transferred to another cell, where he was held for three days without sleep or food. He said the only thing to sit on was his bag with his things. Then the body of a deceased inmate was placed in the room with Markin for a long period of time.
The state prosecution demanded life imprisonment for Markin, but on March 25, 2008, a jury at the Moscow Region Court acquitted him on all charges and released him from custody (Link to document).
However, in May 2008, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation overturned the acquittal based on arguments presented in the cassation appeal by the state prosecutor.
At the start of 2011, Markin posted a video on YouTube addressing the Russian President, in which he told his version of the crimes he was charged with and accused the Russian Prosecutor’s Office of criminal collusion with the executive branch and organized crime (Link to document). A few days later, Markin was arrested for the second time in Spain.
In February 2012, he was extradited to Russia again. Markin stated that the extradition was carried out illegally, without approval from the Spanish Ministry of Internal Affairs or the Council of Ministers. Because of his statement, Markin was prohibited from contesting the extradition in the European Court of Human Rights. Furthermore, no final decision was made regarding Markin’s request for political asylum, which he had submitted to the Spanish authorities.
Until his second sentence went into effect, Markin was detained in Pre-Trial Detention Centre No. 4 (‘The Bear’) and Pre-Trial Detention Centre No. 2 (Butyrka) in Moscow. The charges against Markin had not changed since the first trial, and no new evidence had emerged. However, on August 9, 2013, Markin was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to life in prison (Link to document).
His defense, lawyers Violetta Volkova and Dmitry Aivazyan, pointed to the dubious nature of the evidence, the unclear motives, issues regarding jury selection, and other violations.
During the court session, the presiding judge Andrei Viunov denied the defense the opportunity to question witnesses in the presence of the jury. These witnesses were, however, questioned without the jury present. After the questioning, the defense was not able to reference the testimonies during the closing arguments, which significantly affected the outcome of the criminal case and the jury’s verdict, undermining and compromising the principle of adversarial proceedings.
Criminal procedural law was violated during the trial, which influenced the jury’s responses to the questions they were posed. Thus, in the judge’s summation, only the prosecution’s arguments were laid out, not the defense’s. Under such circumstances, it was impossible for the jury to pronounce a fair verdict.
Nothing came of the appeal against the verdict that Markin’s defense lawyer submitted to the Russian Supreme court (Link to document). The verdict remains in force (Link to document). Meanwhile, Spain made a positive decision to extradite Markin to Russia on the condition that he would not receive a life sentence. However, in the hearing, the Supreme Court stated that it did not see a violation in Markin’s rights with the issuing of the sentence, as “life sentence” does not mean “until the end of one’s life.” According to the Penal Enforcement Code of the Russian Federation, a convict has the right to petition for parole after 25 years of imprisonment.
In 2014, Markin was transferred to serve his sentence in Penal Colony No. 1 in Sosnovka village in the Zubovo-Polyansky district of Mordovia. He was then transferred in February 2016 to the special regime Penal Colony No. 6 in Mordovia.
According to Markin, the workers at this colony beat him with rubber truncheons on his legs and back within three days after his arrival there. Markin was unsuccessfully coerced to confess to committing particularly serious crimes he had nothing to do with and was also persuaded to collaborate with the authorities. Following these beatings, the condition of the convict’s legs severely deteriorated, as bloody sores formed on them, as confirmed by the prison doctors. These sores did not go away for more than a year, and they were only able to get rid of them after applying medical patches which citizens sympathetic to Markin’s cause managed to provide to the colony. Despite this, his legs never fully recovered.
In December 2019, Markin’s lawyer Nail Salkaev reported alleged threats of torture to his client. One of the colony’s prison officers had threatened to take Markin out into the yard at night and, whilst holding him handcuffed to metal bars in the cold, drench him with freezing cold water until he agreed to work in a sewing workshop.
According to the lawyer, the prison officer vowed to register fabricated violations of the prison regulations against him and systematically place him in solitary confinement, where he would be deprived of parcels and packets, visits, letters and newspapers (Link to document).
Salkaev pointed out that, according to Markin, in the workshop, “it is very dusty, stuffy, there is oil from the sewing machines everywhere.” This, quite obviously, could have an extremely negative impact on the health of the prisoner, who had already had part of his lung removed.
Thanks to the efforts of his lawyer Salkaev, Markin was returned to Penal Colong No. 1 in August 2020, and the situation has since normalised.
Since the February 24, 2022, Markin has taken an acutely negative stance towards Russia’s actions in Ukraine, as he has repeatedly stated to others, including to prison officers at the penal colony, as well as in personal correspondence with his relatives and friends.
Activities behind bars
In detention, Markin began to write prose. His work was published in the literary and artistic almanac Artikulyatsiya, on the website of Radio Liberty, in the Ekonomicheskaya i filosofskaya gazeta, and on the literary portal Proza.ru, he also published a blog on Zhivoi zhurnal about the Spanish and Russian prison systems.
In 2021, the publisher LitRes: Samizdat published Markin’s novel Deadly Credit. A documentary detective story, written during his stay in the Moscow pre-trial detention centre and in the Mordovian penal colonies. The novel is aimed at exposing corruption in law enforcement agencies and in the courts on the example of the criminal case against Markin.
One of the fragments of this story is dedicated to Markin’s 2007 meeting in the Moscow Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention centre with Aleksei Pichugin, a former employee of the Yukos oil company [Link to document].
Translated by Alyssa Rider, Nina DePalma and Dominic Reed
