Yesterday the victim Vlaskin testified in the Moscow City Court in the trial of kidnapping the freight forwarder Euroset Andrey Vlaskin in 2003, and extorting property and large sums of money from him and another freight forwarder, Dmitry Smurgin. He told more details about the story, which formed the basis for a criminal case, and explained that previously he had not applied to law enforcement authorities because he feared the retribution of the Euroset security officers. In London, a request by the Prosecutor General of Russia is considered, which applied for extradition of former co-owner of Euroset, Evgeny Chichvarkin in connection with his alleged involvement in the kidnapping of Mr. Vlaskin.

According to Mr. Vlaskin, in Euroset he joined in 2001 as a driver, then he became a freight forwarder and delivered boxes of mobile phones from the Customs to the warehouse. Once, the victim said, a girl friend (from the employees of the company) called him and warned: "Smurgin is pressed by Office security; they have already gone to take you”. "I was scared, I knew what kind of person Levin was, therefore, I went to Tambov," Andrey Vlaskin explained. According to him, soon his father phoned him and told that Boris Levin had visited him and told that Vlaskin Jr. had stolen $ 30 thousand from the company, and demanded compensation for this amount. "When my father asked, what was the proof of his son’s guilt, Levin said "I know it", the victim said. According to Mr. Vlaskin, shortly after his departure in Tambov security officers of Euroset arrived and staged a spy for his family, met them and demanded that they sold everything”. "Soon, Mr Vlaskin told, there were posters in the city with his sketch, which reported on detection of the freight forwarder and there was also an announcement made on local TV. (According to investigators, some of the accused had threatened and beaten up the freight forwarder Dmitry Smurgin in order to force him to write a statement to police that Andrey Vlaskin had stolen money from the company; last year the case brought against forwarder was dismissed by the prosecutor's office "for lack of evidence.") Policemen detained Andrey Vlaskin when he was going out of his fiend’s party. According to the victim, one of the policemen showed him the license on the name of Alexander Kurt (former officer of MIA in the Southern Administrative District of Moscow, one of the defendants in the case). “They brought me to militia department and there were no cars except for foreign cars of security officers”, Andrey Vlaskin said. “I was scared; I even thought they would garner me”. According to him, when Levin and Kurt brought him to the investigator of MIA in the Southern Administrative District, Boris Levin behaved "as if that had been his own office." "The investigator told me: I'll let you go on parole, but Levin still will not let you go", the victim said. According to his story testimony, the security officers took him to an apartment in Reutovo, and then regularly transported him from one rented apartment to another. According to the victim, he was severely beaten, and extorted to give a detailed report on the estate of his family.

According to Andrey Vlaskin, eventually, his parents were forced to sell apartment and other property received "from ZIL” during the Soviet times, (according to prosecutors’ estimations, both victims - former forwarders - had been extorted of property and money amounting to 13 million rubles). Mr. Vlaskin managed to escape, when the guards brought him home for the money. "For a long time I had been hiding from them in Brateevo", Andrey Vlaskin said.

Lawyers of the defendants asked the victim how big his salary was and how he had managed to earn money for such expensive cars. "The salary was $ 1200, while the real wage was $ 30-40 thousand," he replied. The victim said that when he had gone for goods at the customs, there had always been unclaimed boxes with hand sets. "I phoned Shirokov (Alexey Shirokov was executive director of the Euroset wholesale, a defendant in high-profile case of smuggling cell phones. "Kommersant"), he said that according to the documents there had been no phones belonging to us”, the victim explained. “I even brought a lot back, they checked the numbers. After that I took money from my father and began buying the unclaimed phones and selling them. "

"Is that true that you had been drinking together with Sergey Katorgin? (He is one of the defendants’, “Kommersant")", one of the lawyers asked. "Yes, when the guards got bored, they took me to parties a few times, Mr. Vlaskin said. But then I was wearing handcuffs all the time."