The lieutenant colonel of the St. Petersburg police is being tested on a polygraph by FSB officers - whether he is a corporal of the intelligence brigade of the Airborne Forces of the American army.
Collage "Fontanka"
Investigators of the Main Investigation Department of the St. Petersburg Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and operatives of the regional FSB are engaged in a comparative analysis of photographs. They depict, apparently, the same person. In some frames, he is in the uniform of the Russian police. Others wear field camouflage with patches from the elite brigade of the United States Airborne Forces. The hero himself claims that this is a provocation of scammers, and he has never been to America. The documents refute him.
The large-scale fraud criminal case had an unusual side effect. Understanding the problems that arose during the delivery of a batch of milk powder from Belarus to Russia, the investigation reached Fort Bragg, North Carolina, USA.
According to law enforcement officers, in 2014 a certain Orion LLC, headed by Tamara Blinova, received a batch of milk powder, but did not pay for it under the far-fetched pretext of poor quality of the product. According to investigators, Blinova is only a nominal head of the company, but in fact, behind her back is a businessman with a police past, Igor Khotin. The statement of the injured businessmen was submitted to the department for economic security and the fight against corruption of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Moskovsky District of St. No exotic.
The unusual thing began when Tamara Blinova, accused under the fourth part of Article 159 of the Criminal Code, where the sanction is up to 10 years in prison, spoke up in the investigation room.
According to Blinova, she is not only innocent, but on the contrary, she tried for the good of justice. The accused stated that she worked in Orion as an agent of the St. Petersburg police, carrying out an operation to infiltrate the criminal community. I named the curator. This is how Police Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Kulakov appeared in the case file.
The question of why Kulakov, who at that time served in the criminal investigation department of the Vasileostrovsky district, was engaged in the introduction of an "agent" into a commercial structure that seemed to be in no way connected either with ordinary crime or with Vasilyevsky Island, why this "introduction" was not It was not documented in any way and was opened only after the initiation of a criminal case in another area, we will leave the leadership of the initiative policeman. More interesting is the question of who he is - Lieutenant Colonel Kulakov. Igor Khotin, accused of fraud, who has known Kulakov since the 2000s and considered him a good friend before the criminal case, surprised the investigator even more. According to Khotin, Police Lieutenant Colonel Kulakov is a US citizen, and in the recent past, a member of the elite intelligence unit of the US Army.
“I personally saw his American passport,” says Khotin, “and even photographed this document. This photo was saved on my computer, which was seized during the search and is now in the possession of the investigator. "
Fontanka has no access to the confiscated computer, but the American social network myspace.com has a page for the user Sergey Kulakov. On the page there are many photographs, which capture Kulakov, whose appearance is indistinguishable from the appearance of Kulakov from St. Petersburg.
Kulakov was photographed in a setting that was clearly not Petersburg or even Russian. The architecture is more similar to the American one, the license plates of the cars in the frame are registered in North Carolina.
In many of the photographs on Sergey Kulakov, there is a military uniform. Photo captions suggest that most of them were taken at Fort Bragg in 2007-2008.
Not relying on its knowledge of American insignia, Fontanka turned to Alexey Stepanov, a uniform expert, deputy editor-in-chief of the Stary Zeikhgauz magazine.
“The photographs show a man in the uniform of the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade (Battlefield Surveillance Brigade), with the insignia of a specialist (the rank of the US Army, equated to a corporal. - Ed. Note). Judging by the "flash" on the beret, he is serving in the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion. In one of the photos next to him is a member of the Special Forces, ”the expert said.
The 525th US Military Intelligence Brigade is stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. According to open sources, the task of the military intelligence battalion, which is part of the 519 brigade, is the interrogation of prisoners, translation of documents, counterintelligence activities, electronic warfare. The unit took part in the operations of the American army in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2002-2003, members of the battalion were mentioned in connection with allegations of ill-treatment of prisoners in Bagram (Afghanistan) and in Abu Ghraib prison (Iraq).
On the same page there is also a photo of a person indistinguishable from Sergey Kulakov, wearing a different camouflage - the familiar camouflage with stripes of the St. Petersburg OMON. In the background - the detachment's yard and "Hummer" in the service livery "OMON St. Petersburg".
Having read the photo history with surprise, Fontanka inquired about the biography of the Russian Kulakov. It turned out that a tricky career turn is possible. In the militia, Kulakov from the nineties, at the beginning of the zero served in the Department for Combating Organized Crime, in the 9th department, which undermined the economic basis of crime. Quit unexpectedly at the age of 32 in 2004 or 2005. After that, there is a gap in our information.
Again Kulakov appears in the police in 2009 or 2010, already in the economic security department of the Kirovsky district. Over the next 6 years, he manages to serve in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Pushkin region, in the OMON, in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Vasileostrovsky region. On Vasilievsky Island, he changes positions like gloves - an operative of the criminal investigation department, an operative of the OEBiPK, a search inspector of the traffic police department, again an operative of the criminal investigation department in the territorial police department. Despite the special rank of lieutenant colonel, the posts are by no means superior.
Hoping to learn the fascinating story of an officer who, at 32, changed the police and the rank of lieutenant colonel to a paratrooper battalion in America with the rank of corporal, and then returned to his native land and his native law enforcement system, Fontanka contacted Sergei Kulakov.
The answer was not easy. The lieutenant colonel assumes a large-scale operation to discredit him, provocation and falsification. And he claims that not only did he not serve in the American landing force, but that he has never been to the United States either.
Sergey Yuryevich, have you ever been to the United States, do you have American citizenship?
No, I have never been to the USA.
Have you served in the American army?
I'll tell you this: yesterday the investigator interrogated me about this, and today I passed a polygraph at the FSB. I understand what's the matter. On myspace.com, this is not my profile or my photos.
The page was created several years ago, the photos were taken against a different background, obviously not in Russia.
This question has been procrastinating for four or five years, I do not pay attention to it.
But the face in the photo in the American uniform is yours. What do you think is a double, a photomontage?
Most likely a photomontage. What are we talking about the same thing again.
Who can prepare such a provocation for several years?
They are scammers. I think this is Khotin, he is procrastinating this story.
The last question was about what Sergei Kulakov was doing during those few years that passed after his dismissal from the Organized Crime Control Department until he was reinstated in the service in the police of the Kirovsky district. Kulakov did not answer the question.
If Lieutenant Colonel Kulakov is right, and the page on the social network is indeed the result of some kind of criminal operation directed against him, then the possibilities of the villains are wider than one might expect. As far as Fontanka knows, Sergei Kulakov's flights from Russia to the New York airport. John F. Kennedy is documented. Moreover, if the departure from Russia is marked on a Russian foreign passport, then the service of the American border and customs service does not see this passport. This is possible in two cases: either there is an error in the computer base, or in New York, the person arriving has presented a US passport.
The readers of Fontanka can independently assess the level of falsification of photographs with the lieutenant colonel of the Russian police in the role of a specialist in the reconnaissance battalion of the airborne troops.
In St. Petersburg, a court sentenced to two years in prison police officer Sergei Kulakov, who served for several years in the US Army, and also participated in hostilities as an American soldier. This was announced on Monday, October 2, to Interfax in the united press service of the city courts.
A police officer was found guilty of abuse of office. The court deprived him of the right to hold public office for two years. In addition, Kulakov was fined 10 thousand rubles for failure to fulfill the obligation to submit a notification that a Russian citizen has foreign citizenship.
The convict was taken into custody in the courtroom.
The large-scale fraud criminal case had an unusual side effect. Understanding the problems that arose during the delivery of a batch of milk powder from Belarus to Russia, the investigation reached Fort Bragg, North Carolina, USA.
One of those accused of fraud, Igor Khotin, surprised the investigator even more. He stated that one of the suspects in this crime, Police Lieutenant Colonel Kulakov, is a US citizen, and in the recent past, a member of the elite intelligence unit of the US Army.
"I personally saw his American passport and even photographed this document. This photo is saved on my computer, which was seized during the search and is now with the investigator," Khotin said.
The American social network myspace.com has a user page, Sergey Kulakov. On the page there are many photographs, which capture Kulakov, whose appearance is indistinguishable from the appearance of Kulakov from St. Petersburg. Kulakov was photographed in a setting that was clearly not Petersburg or even Russian. The architecture is more similar to the American one, the license plates of the cars in the frame are registered in North Carolina.
In many of the photographs on Sergey Kulakov, there is a military uniform. Photo captions suggest that most of them were taken at Fort Bragg in 2007-2008.
“The photographs show a man in the uniform of the 525th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade, with the insignia of a specialist (the rank of the US Army, equated to a corporal). Judging by the "flash" on the beret, he is serving in the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion. In one of the photos next to him is a member of the Special Forces, ”the expert said.
The 525th US Military Intelligence Brigade is stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. According to open sources, the task of the military intelligence battalion, which is part of the 519 brigade, is the interrogation of prisoners, translation of documents, counterintelligence activities, electronic warfare. The unit took part in the operations of the American army in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2002-2003, members of the battalion were mentioned in connection with allegations of ill-treatment of prisoners in Bagram (Afghanistan) and in Abu Ghraib prison (Iraq).
On the same page there is also a photo of a person indistinguishable from Sergey Kulakov, wearing a different camouflage - the familiar camouflage with stripes of the St. Petersburg OMON. In the background - the detachment's yard and "Hummer" in the service livery "OMON St. Petersburg".
According to the St. Petersburg Internet newspaper Fontanka.ru, Kulakov worked in the police since the 90s. In the early 2000s, he served in the Department of Combating Organized Crime. In 2004 or 2005, Kulakov at the age of 32 resigned from the police.
In 2009 or 2010, Kulakov returned to service in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of St. Petersburg, working as an operative. In an interview with the publication, he categorically rejected living in the United States and serving in the American army. Kulakov claims that he became the victim of a slander of his acquaintance.
Interior Ministry and FSB officers in St. Petersburg are investigating a police lieutenant colonel who allegedly served in the US military intelligence battalion and has American citizenship, Fontanka writes.
Law enforcement agencies came up with remarkable details of the biography of Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Kulakov during the investigation of the fraud in the supply of milk powder from Belarus to Russia. The investigation established that in 2014, the Orion company, headed by Tamara Blinova, did not pay for the consignment under a far-fetched pretext about its poor quality. In the investigator's office, Blinova said that she had been introduced to the company by the St. Petersburg police and named Kulakov as her curator.
Businessman Igor Khotin, allegedly behind Blinova in the implementation of the fraudulent scheme, in turn told investigators that Kulakov, with whom they have known for over ten years, is a US citizen and served in an elite intelligence unit of the American army. Khotin also said that he had photographed his American passport and suggested that the investigation find the picture on the seized computer.
The journalists found the profile of the user Sergey Kulakov on the MySpace social network, whose appearance coincides with the appearance of Kulakov from St. Petersburg. Photos of the profile owner were found on the page, taken in the United States. In some photographs dated 2007-2008, Kulakov is captured in American military uniform.
Photo caption: "Romka, me and Andrei. Seeing off Andrei to Iraq on September 23, 2007"
“The photographs show a man in the uniform of the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade, with the insignia of a specialist (a rank similar to a corporal). Judging by the flash on his beret, he is serving in the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion. In one of the photos next to him is a serviceman of the special operations forces, "said Aleksey Stepanov, deputy editor-in-chief of the Stary Zeikhgauz magazine.
The tasks of the 519th military intelligence battalion, in which Kulakov served, is to interrogate prisoners, translate documents, conduct counter-intelligence and electronic warfare. In 2002-2003, the battalion was mentioned in the press - its servicemen were accused of cruel treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the USA, Kulakov drove a car with the number "HA TAHKE"
When journalists tried to find out the details of Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Kulakov's career in Russia, it turned out that there was a "gap" in information. In 2005, at the age of 32, he resigned from the ninth department of the Organized Crime Control Department, which was engaged in undermining the economic basis of criminal structures, and disappeared for 4 years. In 2009 or 2010, Kulakov again got a job in the police - this time in the economic security department of the Kirovsky district. The MySpace page also contains photos from St. Petersburg.
After returning to the police, Kulakov changed many positions that did not correspond to his rank of lieutenant colonel - he served as an operative for economic security and threat, as well as an inspector in the traffic police.
Kulakov himself told reporters that he had never been to the United States, he did not create a profile on the social network, and the pictures are a photomontage. The interlocutors reminded him that the page was created several years ago.
“This question has been plodding for four or five years, I don’t pay attention to it,” he said and accused Igor Khotin of creating the page.
According to the policeman, on this occasion, he recently underwent a polygraph test at the FSB and was interrogated by an investigator. The lieutenant colonel refused to answer the question about what he was doing in those years when he left the police service.
The publication received documented evidence of Kulakov's flights from Russia to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. In one of the cases, his departure was noted with a Russian foreign passport, but the American border service did not register his arrival with this document. Journalists emphasize that if this is not an error in the computer database, then Kulakov presented the US border guards with a US citizen's passport.
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American corporal or Russian lieutenant colonel? October 2nd, 2017
In St. Petersburg, a guilty verdict was passed on the former detective of the 16th department of the Vasileostrovsky UMVD Sergei Kulakov, who hid his American citizenship. However, he was sent to the colony not for this violation, but for exceeding his official powers. The convict was taken into custody in the courtroom.
According to the joint press service of the St. Petersburg courts, Kulakov received US citizenship in 2009, but decided not to inform the migration service and his colleagues about this when he joined the police. As a result, the court sentenced him to a fine of 10 thousand rubles.
Another crime is much more serious. At one time, during the investigation of the case, he persuaded the victim to participate in an operational experiment without legal grounds. As a result, due to the actions of the police officer, the woman was brought to criminal responsibility, but he himself did not escape punishment.
The Vasileostrovsky District Court sent Kulakov to a general regime colony for two years and banned him from holding positions in the civil service for two years. A US citizen was taken into custody in the courtroom.
According to the St. Petersburg Internet newspaper Fontanka.ru, Kulakov worked in the police since the 90s. In the early 2000s, he served in the Department of Combating Organized Crime. In 2004 or 2005, Kulakov at the age of 32 resigned from the police.
The former police officer served in the US Army and received American citizenship. The publication published photos of a man who looks like Kulakov from the page of user Sergey Kulakov of the myspace.com social network. The pictures show a US soldier from the 525th military intelligence brigade of the country, stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. This unit took part in hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, the newspaper said.
In 2009 or 2010, Kulakov returned to service in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of St. Petersburg, working as an operative. In an interview with the publication, he categorically rejected living in the United States and serving in the American army. Kulakov claims that he became the victim of a slander of his acquaintance.
In September 2016, a law enforcement source told Interfax that Kulakov was previously a member of the Russian police, after he received American citizenship, served in the US Army, took part in hostilities on the side of this country, and then returned to Russia and settled again on work for the police.
According to the source, "there is no reason to believe that he again got a job in the Russian police in order to damage the security of the Russian Federation." The source added that the police officer's biography attracted attention after the special services had a corresponding statement about him.
On this fact, the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the region initiated an official check. According to the St. Petersburg media, S. Kulakov, who was working at the time of the inspection by a criminal investigation officer in the territorial police department of St. Petersburg, resigned from the authorities in 2004-2005, after which nothing was known about his work in the Russian Federation until 2009-2010, when he again entered the service in the St. Petersburg police.
It all started with a criminal investigation into fraud. LLC "Orion", headed by a certain Tamara Blinova, received a consignment of milk powder, which was not paid for under the far-fetched pretext of poor quality of the goods.
The victims filed a complaint with the Department for Economic Security and Combating Corruption of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Moskovsky District of St. Petersburg, after which a criminal case was opened.
The investigators assumed that citizen Blinova is a purely nominal person, and behind her is businessman Igor Khotin, who was a police officer in the past.
During one of the interrogations, Blinova struck the investigator leading the case with a revelation - she is in fact a secret police agent who was specially introduced into a criminal group in order to expose her.
To prove the veracity of her words, the woman named the “curator” - Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Kulakov.
After checking this statement, the investigators established that it was a real person who served in the criminal investigation department of the Vasileostrovsky district of St. Petersburg.
Lieutenant Colonel Kulakov has changed many posts, six years ago he really worked in the Department of Economic Crimes, dealing with cases of economic crimes, but at present his sphere of activity is far from such issues. So the version that Lieutenant Colonel Kulakov introduced citizen Blinova as a "secret agent" raises serious doubts.
But Igor Khotin's revelations turned out to be much more interesting. He told investigators that Kulakov was in fact a US citizen and, moreover, a former US Army soldier.
The businessman assured that he personally saw Kulakov's American passport and even photographed him.
At first glance, all this seemed complete absurdity, but, apparently, the investigators, who studied the data of the computer seized from Khotin, found something there that made them take the biography of Lieutenant Colonel Kulakov seriously. And soon the St. Petersburg department of the FSB got involved in the case.
In the social network MySpace, we managed to find a user page under the nickname Sergey Kulakov. Among the photographs posted there are a number of images of a man in an American military uniform with a "Kulakov" tag on his chest.
On the same page, you can find photographs of the same man in the uniform of the Russian OMON at the shooting range with a Kalashnikov machine gun, as well as in camouflage, posing in front of an official car of the St. Petersburg police department.
If we start not from the conclusions of the examination, but from our own impressions, the same person is captured in the American and Russian forms.
Fontanka journalists phoned Lieutenant Colonel Kulakov himself, who said that the page on MySpace was not his, but that everything that was happening was an attempt to compromise him. The photographs themselves Kulakov called "photomontage".
It's just not clear who and why needed to "substitute" Lieutenant Colonel Kulakov in such a sophisticated way?
The 525th US Military Intelligence Brigade is stationed at Fort Bragg. According to experts, the person with the inscription "Kulakov" on the tag on the photos from the social network is captured in a uniform that speaks of his belonging to the 519th military intelligence battalion of this brigade.
The battalion's tasks include interrogating prisoners, translating documents, counterintelligence activities, and electronic warfare.
“Kulakov” with a photo, judging by the insignia, rose to the rank of corporal.
The Federal Law "On Service in the Internal Affairs Bodies of the Russian Federation and Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation", adopted in 2011, prohibits the service in the internal affairs bodies of persons with foreign nationality. An employee with whom such citizenship is revealed is subject to immediate dismissal.
A huge number of questions arise to the personnel service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - after his reinstatement in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Kulakov served for at least six years, changed several divisions, and nowhere there were questions about the "dark pages" of his biography.
The geography of service of 47-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Kulakov is wide. In the nineties, he began his career in the department for combating organized crime in St. Petersburg, and in the mid-zero he emigrated to America. He received citizenship and, with the rank of corporal, got a job in the 519th battalion of the 525th military intelligence brigade - an elite unit of the US Army Airborne Forces. At the beginning of the 2000s, the battalion took part in special operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2009, Kulakov returned to his homeland and resumed his work in the St. Petersburg police. He did not inform his leadership about the second citizenship - American.
FAILURE RECRUITER
In the northern capital, the career went uphill. First - the OBEP of the Kirovsky district, then - the UMVD for the city of Pushkin, and in 2013 Kulakov was taken over by the criminal investigation department of the Vasileostrovsky district. Then he became an operative.
They learned about the American past of Sergei Yuryevich by chance. Back in September 2013, Kulakov began to "dig" under the businessman Igor Khotin, suspected of fraud. But then he made a mistake: he tried to recruit two women from St. Petersburg who had access to the business of a businessman. One of them, Tamara Blinova, agreed.
But the lieutenant colonel did not have any authority to create an agent network. Therefore, in 2014, law enforcement officers came not only for the entrepreneur, but also for Kulakov's informant. The woman insisted that she acted strictly on the instructions of the policeman. But in vain. As a result, she herself was brought to criminal responsibility.
Usually agents are protected by guarantees of the Federal Law "On Operational Investigative Activities", but Kulakov did not issue any documents confirming the participation of a Petersburg woman in an operational experiment, - the investigators say.
Nevertheless, Blinova's words served as an excuse to check the biography of the lieutenant colonel once again. It was then that the American trail surfaced.
I gave myself up
Sergei Kulakov gave himself up with giblets. While serving in the United States, the man willingly shared photos on the MySpace social network. In many photographs, he is captured in the uniform of the American army at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina.
At first, the lieutenant colonel resisted. He said that the pictures were mounted, that the page on social networks was not his, that he was framed ... However, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case under two articles - for failure to notify of his citizenship and for exceeding official powers in the case of an informant.
PENALTY AND TWO YEARS
Kulakov's second citizenship interested not only the investigators, but also the employees of the Federal Security Service. However, the check showed that the police officer was not engaged in espionage.
The fate of the lieutenant colonel was recently decided in the Vasileostrovsky district court. The prosecutor demanded a fine of 50 thousand rubles for Kulakov for concealing citizenship and 3.5 years in prison for exceeding official powers.
However, the sentence turned out to be milder. Judge Viktoria Volkova ordered the lieutenant colonel to be fined 10 thousand rubles and sent to a colony for two years.
The accused was taken into custody in the courtroom, - told "KP" in the United press service of city courts.
In his defense, Sergei Kulakov had nothing to say.
COMPETENTLY
Lawyer Ivan ALEXANDROV:
The case is unprecedented. Especially considering that after returning to his homeland, the policeman had to undergo certification of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Surprisingly, no one discovered he had a second citizenship. It can be assumed that Kulakov has very good connections in the authorities.
Can a citizen of another country serve in our police? This is out of the question. The passport must be Russian.
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