Tarasov Aleksei

Tarasov Aleksei

Biography

2024: Sentence - 8 years in prison for fraud worth 1 billion rubles

On July 17, 2024, it became known that the Dorogomilovsky District Court of Moscow issued a verdict against a former high-ranking employee of the United Company (OK) Rusal Alexei Tarasov. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in a case of particularly large fraud.

According to the Kommersant newspaper, a criminal case on large-scale embezzlement of funds of the Rusal Ural division was initiated in June 2022. According to the investigation, in 2016 Tarasov, who at that time held the position of head of the caustic soda department of the commercial department of the Alumina Division in the branch of Rusal Global Management B.V., which is part of the unified structure of OK Rusal TD JSC, entered into a criminal conspiracy with the general director and main founder of KR Group LLC Alexander Tishchenko. It is alleged that Tarasov, together with an accomplice, misled the tender committee and acquired raw materials from controlled firms. As a result of these schemes, he, according to the prosecution, earned more than 1 billion rubles.

The court agreed with the conclusions of the investigation, finding Tarasov guilty of especially large-scale fraud (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation): he was assigned eight years in a general regime colony. Tishchenko was convicted under the same article: he received seven and a half years with serving in a general regime correctional colony.

In addition, the court satisfied the civil claim of United Company Rusal Ural Aluminum JSC and jointly recovered more than 1 billion 90 million rubles from the defendants in the case as compensation for damage. Cars, apartments and other property of convicts and their relatives, which were seized during the preliminary investigation, will be used to reimburse these funds. At the same time, the defense insists on the innocence of the convicts. Tarasov himself calls the claims far-fetched, noting that he was only looking for raw materials at minimal prices.^[1]

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