Former Yekaterinburg mayor Yevgeny Roizman was detained for 48 hours in connection with a case of discrediting the Russian Armed Forces. He will be taken to Moscow for investigation and faces up to five years in prison. According to media reports, the reason for the opening of the case was a video on the former politician’s YouTube channel. Previously, Roizman had been fined three times under a similar administrative article. However, according to a number of sources, this article, which is political in nature, may soon be followed by others – criminal ones.
During the search law enforcers confiscated documents, computer equipment, flash drives, disks and other data carriers from his apartment and private antique museum (located in the same house). It also became known that law enforcers also obtained some interesting records, numerous business cards of Western diplomats and ancient Old Believer icons whose origin is yet to be established. In particular, a dozen and a half business cards of Western diplomats, politicians and public figures. Including ones from the United States, Switzerland, Finland, and Ukraine.
From the very beginning of the events in Ukraine in 2014, Roizman demonstrated his rejection of state policy in this direction by attending a rally in support of the participants in the Bolotnaya Square riots and a picket against the “occupation of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea”. And actively met with representatives of foreign diplomatic missions. It seems to be no big deal, and he is entitled to communicate with whomever he wants. Except that these meetings were often informal, to say mildly, like a private audience with British Ambassador Laurie Bristow at the Hyatt Regency hotel, or a walk with the US Consul General in Ekaterinburg, Otto Hans van Maerssen, in the Nevyansk icon museum.
The latter, incidentally, is linked to a curious episode that took place in the autumn of 2014, when Van Maerssen met with leaders of the Urals opposition in a restaurant in Yekaterinburg. At the time, footage of the diplomat’s speech was leaked on the internet and he said he was very happy about the meeting:
These elections (referring to Roizman’s victory – ed.) have changed the whole situation in the city. There is hope that everything can be changed, said the US consul general.
Among other cards found in his flat, by the way, there is a business card of retired Ukrainian Colonel-General Ihor Smeshko, the former head of the Security Service of Ukraine, and then advisor to the Ukrainian president and head of the intelligence committee under Poroshenko.
Additionally, investigators are known to be scrutinizing the icons seized from his home. Some of them, according to preliminary estimates, are very valuable. That is why his private museum was searched simultaneously with his arrest.
The future mayor, who according to operational information, had contacts to the structures of the organized criminal group Uralmash, joined himself to the subject of icon painting long ago, in the mid 80s.
After having been in prison (he was convicted under three articles of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR – “theft by a group of persons by prior conspiracy”, “fraud committed by a group of persons” and “unlawful possession of edged weapons”), he found a job as a mechanic in a factory, attended night school and went to university, from which he graduated as a certified “historian and archivist” specializing in Old Believer icon painting. And in those years the criminal world was interested in this very business, buying up old icons and paintings, which made a fortune.
In addition, law enforcement officers are likely to pay attention to the activities of the current Roizman Foundation, which collects money for charity. The point is, it gets a lot of money – hundreds of millions – which is really needed to buy medicines for sick kids. But not many people know that the foundation is able to take some of it – and a lot of it – for its own needs.
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