Penza, 3 June 2018. PenzaNews. Penza businessman Alexei Shmatko hiding from Russian justice abroad but wishing to return home spoke about circumstances of his escape to England in the documentary "London, goodbye!" shown on the federal TV channel Russia 24.

Photo: TV channel Russia 24

According to film director Anna Afanasyeva, after several years of work in a Gazprom branch Alexei Shmatko founded a company engaged in the construction of boiler houses and the problems of the businessman began when the company's turnover reached 80 million dollars a year.

"I was invited for a conversation with a corrupt official, so to speak. He suggested that I shared profits with him – that I gave 50% of company shares and paid a so-called tribute. After that I started to resist. It goes without saying, I did not agree. Why do I have to pay someone my company's money? Well, that is it – I got in a fishbowl," the businessman explained.

Commenting on the opening of the criminal case against him on illegal compensation of VAT for the construction of a boiler house, Aleksei Shmatko called the amount of money featuring case materials ridiculous.

"Excuse me but at that time I drove a car that cost over 3 million roubles. This is ridiculous. It was an absolutely legal operation – a tax inspectorate paid 800,000 roubles of VAT and not to my company at that but to the company that owned it.

According to the disgraced businessman, in jail where he spent several months he was regularly beaten and "had to stay in one cell with people with hepatitis C and AIDS".

"The judge was paid, the investigator was paid. I pleaded guilty, got probation and was released. The Russian prison is a scary place. I had to get out of there at any cost," Alexei Shmatko noted.

He added that once free he had begun investigation of his own and submitted a report to the police on the fact of corruption on behalf of tax inspectors, who according to him "had stolen money from the budget" but as a result "everything had gone wrong" and resulted in the accusations against him.

Alexei Shmatko confessed that he had escaped Russia using a false passport, and at first he had planned to travel to the USA but had not been allowed to take the flight, so he had fled to London.

"You know, I feel some resentment at the issue involving Russia. [...] I revealed corrupt officials, I submitted a report to the police against them and as a result I suffered myself. However, by and large, the Russian Federation should be grateful to me for helping to punish the thieves and crooks who stole money from the budget and instead of gratitude I received spits, blows with truncheons, and leg kicks.

As it was noted by presidential plenipotentiary on the rights of businessmen in Russia Boris Titov, who had met fugitive businessmen including Alexei Shmatko at the beginning of 2018 in London, "wrong measures of restraint had been applied against them".

"All of them are entrepreneurs, that is why according to Art. 108 of the Criminal Procedure Code a preventive measure involving deprivation cannot be applied against them. For this reason [...] we suggest our government that the measure of restraint should be changed from arrest to the obligation to appear. Then they will be automatically excluded from the list of wanted persons. [...] If arrest is cancelled they will have a chance to return to Russia," the business ombudsman explained.

Speaking about a so-called Titov's list the presidential plenipotentiary on the rights of businessmen said that in connection with this situation President of Russia Vladimir Putin, the government and the prosecutor's office received letters.

"President appended instructions, gave an order to the prosecutor's office to deal with this issue, that is why a standard process began under which we consider the case of each businessman that turns to us," Boris Titov said.