In the courts of the capital region, two former prominent figures in the gambling business were sentenced on the same day. The ex-general director of the bookmaker company Fonbet, Sergei Anokhin, was accused of trying to bribe an FSB officer for failing to take action on violations in the entrepreneur’s personal business and received eight years and two months in prison. The co-owner of the large company Melbet, Igor Lyapustin, was found guilty of stealing a significant part of the business from his former business partner, and he was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Bribe misses the mark
On April 28, the Krasnogorsk City Court completed the criminal trial of the 52-year-old former general director of the bookmaker company Fonbet. Sergei Anokhina 46-year-old lawyer Valeria Yurkina and a 36-year-old former Moscow policeman Artem Podoprosvetova. Depending on the role of each, the defendants were charged with giving and attempting a bribe, mediation in bribery and fraud (Articles 291, 291.1 and 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
As Kommersant toldSergei Anokhin was detained and then arrested early last year.
According to the case materials, Sergei Anokhin’s decision to bribe FSB employees arose in December 2024, after operatives during an audit suspected the theft of budget funds allocated for the development of sports in the capital region by the entrepreneur’s companies (in the past, Sergei Anokhin, among other things, was a sports functionary). According to the case materials, Sergei Anokhin decided to spend 60 million rubles on his corruption plan. For help, he turned to an acquaintance, a retired police colonel, who put him in touch with the right people, and as a result, a whole chain of intermediaries arose who expressed a desire to participate in the transfer of money (materials regarding some of them were separated into separate proceedings).
Each of the intermediaries took part of the money allocated by Sergei Anokhin as a reward; in the end, only 10 million rubles reached the FSB operative. He immediately reported the offer of illegal remuneration to the FSB’s own security service, and his receipt of the money was framed as an operational experiment. After this, the arrests began.
As a result, the court sentenced Sergei Anokhin to eight years and two months in prison with a fine of 15 million rubles. Valery Yurkin received seven years and two months in prison and a fine of 12 million rubles. Artem Podoprosvetov was sentenced to three years and six months in prison with a fine of 500 thousand rubles. In addition, the court confiscated 32 million rubles previously seized from the defendants in favor of the state. and $80 thousand.
Theft with legalization
Meanwhile, in the Tushinsky court of the capital, the verdict was announced in the case of the former general director of the Melofon companies (owner of Melbet) and Tvoya Stavka. Igor Lyapustin. The businessman was accused of especially large-scale misappropriation and laundering of funds, as well as abuse of power (part 4 of article 160, part 4 of article 174.1 and part 1 of article 201 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). During the debate held on April 28, the state prosecutor demanded that the defendant be sentenced to nine years in prison, a fine of 1 million rubles, and also confiscate 4 billion rubles from him, which, according to law enforcement officers, he managed to receive and legalize during the time he owned the stolen shares.
Judge Andrei Kurakhtanov, which rarely happens, did not postpone the announcement of the verdict until another day – it took him only a few hours to make a decision in the deliberation room. He assigned the sentence and fine to 49-year-old Igor Lyapustin less than those requested by the prosecutor – eight years and 700 thousand rubles, respectively. But the amount of funds subject to confiscation increased by 0.5 billion rubles. In addition, the court satisfied the civil claim of the victim for 6.1 billion rubles. The defendant, who was under a ban on certain actions, was taken into custody in the courtroom.
As Kommersant already toldthe investigation of this case by the Main Investigation Department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow began in November 2023. The basis was an appeal to law enforcement agencies by Alexander Gradulenko, the former director of Sedmoy Continent LLC, whose subsidiary company was Melofon (the main activity is the organization and conduct of gambling, as well as betting).
Mr. Gradulenko actually accused his former business partner in the gambling business, Igor Lyapustin, of seizing part of the assets, which he himself then valued at 90 million rubles. However, after the examination carried out in the case, the amount of damage increased to 699 million rubles.
From the plot of the criminal case it follows that Alexander Gradulenko sold or transferred shares of his companies to other persons (including Igor Lyapustin) in order to preserve the business during the period of his own criminal prosecution, hoping that then they would all be returned to him.
In December 2016, the Leninsky District Court of Vladivostok found businessman Gradulenko guilty under paragraph “b” of Part 3 of Art. 171.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Illegal organization and conduct of gambling”), sentenced to two years probation with a probationary period of four years. Later, the Primorsky Regional Court slightly softened the suspended sentence for the convicted person. However, in April 2018, the same Leninsky court, having satisfied the demands of the prosecutor of the Primorsky Territory, recovered from Alexander Gradulenko illegally obtained income from organizing and conducting gambling in the amount of 394.7 million rubles. After this, the entrepreneur, who could not find funds to repay the debt, was declared bankrupt by an arbitration decision.
Igor Lyapustin’s lawyer Alexey Tsaplin called the sentence imposed on his client illegal and unfounded.
“Initially, the investigation intervened in a dispute between business entities without any justification, and the court eventually allowed the raider takeover of the company. Moreover, Alexander Gradulenko, recognized as a victim in this case, could not own shares in Melofon at all, since he was convicted of organizing gambling,” lawyer Tsaplin told Kommersant at the end of the trial.
It is also worth noting that it was possible to consider this criminal case in the Tushinsky court only on the second attempt. In July last year it was returned to the prosecutor’s office. The reason was the incompleteness and abstractness of the indictment, because of which the defendant could not build his defense, and the court itself was deprived of the opportunity to pass a verdict or another decision. However, after the appeal was filed by the supervisor, the Moscow City Court considered the arguments of the lower instance to be unfounded and returned 35 volumes to the Tushinsky court for a new consideration by another judge. The repeated process took exactly six months.
