Debt lady: former business partner of Kai Metov was convicted of fraud for 1 billion
To borrow more than 200 million rubles, embezzle them, and not pay them back, hiding behind even more fictitious debts and declaring himself bankrupt — such a fraud scheme was invented by realtor Elena Filippova. For a long time, she was a business partner of singer Kai Metov, and one of the defendants in the litigation turned out to be Ivan Brilka, the son of Senator from the Irkutsk region Sergey Brilka. Referring to the "painted" debts, Filippova dragged out legal disputes about the return of money for almost 10 years. As a result, when the real creditors succeeded in instituting criminal proceedings against her for fraud, she was convicted only in one episode out of three. The remaining two have expired. About the cunning scheme that almost allowed the fraudster to escape punishment for embezzling hundreds of millions of rubles — in the Izvestia article.
10 years without penalty
Elena Filippova, a realtor and former business partner of singer Kai Metov, will spend the next five years in a penal colony. This verdict was handed down on March 31 by the Kuzminsky District Court of Moscow. It could have been even tougher, but for two of the three fraud episodes, the accused was acquitted on non—rehabilitating grounds - the 10-year statute of limitations simply expired. All these years, Filippova has been dragging out legal disputes with her creditors in every possible way, just in order to take advantage of this legal loophole so that she would not be imprisoned.
To do this, she used a fairly simple but effective scheme that allowed her to avoid paying debts for years, according to the materials of numerous courts available to Izvestia. To do this, she "imagined" fictitious debts, much greater than the real ones. And then the fictitious creditors, having received the majority of votes at the creditors' meeting, concluded amicable agreements with her, according to which payments stretched over many years.
The first such agreement was signed at the end of 2016. When Filippova paid practically nothing on it, in 2023 a second agreement was concluded on approximately the same terms, also with very long payment terms. The real creditors couldn't do anything about it until they proved, first in arbitration, and then in a criminal case, the fictitious nature of the "painted" debts of almost 1 billion rubles.
History of fraud
The criminal case was opened in 2019 for three episodes. In 2013, Filippova borrowed 164 million rubles from individual entrepreneur Nadezhda Sokolova with a promise to invest them in commercial real estate. She also took 38.3 million rubles from Alexey Eliseev, the owner of Novokhopersky Bread LLC, and 8.5 million rubles from Ratibor Derbyshev, an entrepreneur. The latter told the court that he met Filippova in the middle of 2015. She was introduced to him by a mutual acquaintance Konstantin Ivin, pointing out that Filippova was a wealthy and wealthy woman, "with whom you can have any dealings."
She took the money against receipts with the promise of interest payments — up to 24% per annum, and in some cases, against real estate. However, even here she deceived the victims, it follows from the court materials. So, the pledge under the agreement with Ratibor Derbyshev was a two-bedroom apartment in Gagarinsky Lane in the center of Moscow. However, at that time, an encumbrance had already been imposed on the object in the form of a ban on conducting transactions with it.
Nadezhda Sokolova and Alexey Eliseev were the first to sound the alarm about non-repayment of debts. At that moment, Filippova, in order not to pay their debts, for the first time tried to apply a scheme with a fictitious creditor. She signed a contract with her friend Konstantin Ivin, according to which she allegedly owed him $ 1.3 million. And immediately after that, she wrote to the Moscow Arbitration Court to declare her bankrupt. In February 2016, the arbitration court introduced a debt restructuring procedure for Filippova.
However, in the course of further court proceedings, the deception with Ivin was revealed. According to the materials of the arbitration proceedings, "Ivin did not have the financial ability to act as Filippova's creditor due to his financial condition." He did not provide any evidence that such money had ever been in his accounts, that he had paid taxes on it, and that he had transferred it as a debt to Filippova. Thus, the debt was recognized as imaginary, it follows from the materials of the courts.
Filippova again faced the need to repay her debts, and then she "presented" another fictitious creditor, the foreign offshore company DZ Ltd., which, as follows from the court materials, has signs of fictitiousness and does not operate in Russia. From the documents provided by Filippova to the courts, it followed that this company allegedly invested $ 5 million in her projects, but the businessman could not return them.
How did Kai Metov get involved
At about the same time, singer Kai Metov appeared as creditors in the bankruptcy case of the realtor, claiming Filippova's debt to him in the amount of 173.6 million rubles, and Ivan Brilka — he claimed a debt of 96 million rubles. Taking into account fines and penalties, Filippova's total debts exceeded 1 billion rubles.
According to SPARK, at that time, Kai Metov and Elena Filippova had a joint business — they were co-owners of KMP Investment Company LLC (Metov has a 66.67% share in the authorized capital, Filippova — 33.3%). The company was later liquidated.
Singer Kai Metov
Against the background of the new creditors, the old ones (Sokolova, Eliseev and Derbyshev) no longer looked big and did not have a majority in the creditors' meeting. As a representative of creditors with a majority of votes, Ivan Brilka proposed concluding a settlement agreement in Filippova and extending debt payments for several years.
As a result, in 2016, and then in 2023, the pool of creditors and Filippova concluded two settlement agreements. As indicated in the case file, Filippova's "affiliated and controlled" creditors (among whom Ivan Brilka is named), by a majority vote, decided to settle the case in this way. "But in fact, these actions could have been aimed at avoiding payments to real creditors," explained a source familiar with the process.
Moreover, in order to conclude a second settlement agreement, Filippova submitted to the court documents according to which she owned shares of Gazprom-ONPZ JSC for a large sum, and participated in the project of reconstruction of cultural heritage sites "Manor of 1801" and "Manor of Filimonki" with the creation of a hotel complex, in confirmation of future income from professional activities.in the amount of at least 400 million rubles," follows from the court documents.
But the real creditors managed to prove that all this information was not true — that is, false information was submitted to the court.
At the same time, during the process in the Arbitration Court initiated by the real creditors, it was proved that there were signs of coordinated actions between some of the creditors (in particular, Ivan Brilka) and Filippova during the bankruptcy. So, four land plots belonging to Filippova during the bankruptcy proceedings were sold to her brother, and then to Ivan Brilka.
As Izvestia found out, after studying the USRR statements, in 2018 Brilke acquired ownership of commercial real estate at Petrovka St., 21, p. 3,5. Its approximate cost is estimated at 500 million rubles. According to the same scheme, a house with a plot of land in the village of Mitkino in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region and an apartment in 29 K. 1 on Lomonosovsky Prospekt in Moscow were alienated in favor of Brilka, according to court documents.
In the criminal case, Ivan Brilka and Kai Metov were witnesses.
What was said at the trial
Kai Metov, who acted as a witness, said that he met Filippova on tour in Irkutsk. Then they met in Moscow, and he agreed to a new friend's offer to invest in the purchase of real estate. To document their obligations, they signed four loan agreements totaling 173.6 million rubles. Then he found out that Filippova was bankrupt and appealed to the court with a request to include him in the register of creditors.
It followed from the testimony of Kai Metov that in 2021 Filippova returned 600 thousand rubles to him, and for the remaining amount she stated that she could not repay the debt because Nadezhda Sokolova was interfering with her. Metov did not apply to law enforcement agencies, because he has court decisions, and he is waiting for the fulfillment of obligations.
Ivan Brilka stated during the investigation that he had friendly relations with Filippova, and she owed him a debt when he bought out her obligations to Loko-bank. As for the property that passed to him through Filippova's relatives, according to Brilka's testimony, he bought it at a market price. For example, he bought a mansion on Petrovka in 2018 for 18 million rubles, the payment was made in cash, there is a receipt for this. It is not known why this money was not transferred to the bankruptcy estate and did not go to pay debts to other creditors.
During the interrogations at the trial, Filippova pleaded not guilty, stating that at first she worked in Irkutsk, engaged in evaluation activities. In 2003, she acquired real estate in Moscow. She didn't have enough money, so she took out a loan.
In the capital, she continued to buy real estate, renovated it, transferred it to a non-residential fund and sold it. Then she started opening stores, the last one in 2016-2017. She met Ratibor Derbyshev at the same time. She needed money, and her friend Evin said that there are people who are engaged in "waste", that is, they give loans at interest. Ivin introduced the convict to Derbyshev.
However, the court sided with the prosecution and recognized Filippova's actions as fraud. However, the guilty verdict was handed down only in relation to the episode with the deception of Ratibor Derbyshev — since Filippova borrowed money from him later than others, the statute of limitations on the case did not expire.
Izvestia failed to contact the participants in the case.
A rare scheme
78 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, a person who has committed a crime under the article on fraud on an especially large scale is exempt from criminal liability if more than ten years have passed since the date of the crime, recalled Ilya Vasilchuk, a judicial lawyer and an expert on the security of electronic transactions.
"Therefore, one of the main strategies of criminals to avoid punishment is to delay the time until the court passes sentence," he said. — Usually, for this purpose, lawyers of those involved, using procedural delays, try to stall for time, seeking from the court to return the case for further investigation, prolong the time to familiarize themselves with the case materials.
But using the mechanisms of civil proceedings, when they try to present a crime as a civil law relationship and initiate a whole "bouquet" of various court cases for these purposes in order to avoid initiating criminal proceedings and investigations, is not such a common scheme.
— This is a new thing that has now appeared in such criminal law enforcement practice, — the expert noted.
According to him, if law enforcement agencies, when applying for a criminal case, see that a civil case is being considered in parallel, they often wait until the case is completed. Only then do they take more serious measures to investigate the crime.
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