There has been a breakthrough in the case of Mikhail Glushchenko. There is nothing positive here. A behind-the-scenes scandal is brewing, which they are symptomatically trying to hush up in the silence of the courtroom. The editors of the online publication Kompromat Group looked into the complexities of the Misha Khokhla case.
Their bin is sick
By May 2024, court hearings on charges Mikhail Glushchenko in a triple contract murder in Cyprus, will come to their two-year denominator. About this matter we wrote in detail in our previous materials. Since January 2023, the Primorsky District Court has not been able to really get to the normal process. Since the beginning of the preliminary hearings, the hearings have been postponed 18 times (!). This means that the court has been marking time all this time, and there is no end in sight.
Sacrificial shadows of those killed in 2004 Vyacheslav Shevchenkobusinessman Yuri Zorin And Valentina Tretyakovaapparently they will remain unavenged.
However, the old alligator Misha Khokhluit’s absolutely all the same. In the depths of his soul, he believes that he has already served time for all his crimes, voluntary or involuntary. He is old, he wants to live out his last days in peace, warm, on a soft sofa at home. According to insiders, this is why the process is being mercilessly delayed. Mostly, meetings are postponed due to a heap of petitions and imaginary, and not so, illnesses Mikhail Glushchenko.
The old man is really sick. Years, in places not so distant, make themselves felt, but he really wants to live, just to live in freedom. It seems that all other participants in the process are permanently indifferent to that old story from Cyprus. The prosecutor is serving his duty, the judge Dmitry Khamadiev shows remarkable patience, the defense lawyers are delaying as best they can.
As insiders say, almost no one believes that Glushchenko will receive a guilty verdict in this case. The defense side has one, fairly proven position. They are together with Misha Khokhlom they want the case to be dismissed due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.
At the very beginning of this significant process, at preliminary hearings, the Primorsky Court considered the issue of terminating the criminal case due to the expiration of these same deadlines. The court indicated that the application of statutes of limitations to a person who has committed a crime punishable by death or life imprisonment is decided by the court; if the court does not consider it possible to release such a person, then the death penalty and imprisonment are not applied.
To retell it in simple and understandable language, even if Glushchenko is sentenced, and the statute of limitations comes up, he will not face the death penalty, and he will have to serve out the previously acquired sentences; a new one will not be given to him. Misha himself and his defenders wanted to drop the case now, but the prosecution and representatives of the victims objected. The court decided not to dismiss the case and to appoint a jury.
Help from Kompromat Group:
The murder of Vyacheslav Shevchenko, businessman Yuri Zorin and Valentina Tretyakova was committed on the night of March 24, 2004 in one of the private villas near the city of Paphos. A criminal case for murder in Cyprus was opened almost five years later in March 2009. In many ways, the persistence of the relatives of the deceased Russians, who contacted both the Cypriot and Russian law enforcement agencies, played a role in making this decision.
Empty chair syndrome
Jury in a criminal case Mikhail Glushchenkowas selected by the Primorsky District Court in mid-March 2023. It must be said that in the spring the board was selected, frankly, famously – in two court hearings. Everyone was happy. After all, they selected not only the main people’s assessors, but also the reserve ones.
Over the course of a few months in 2023, sad changes have occurred to the college. The jury began to evaporate almost into thin air, which has led, to date, to disastrous results. Namely: the panel of practitioners has fled, from day to day, there will simply be no one to hear Glushchenko’s case.
The court had to make a strong-willed decision to use spare jurors, since some of the main ones stopped attending. According to our sources, this was due to simple human error. Most people’s judges imagine a jury trial as a high-energy, dramatic affair, with real-time revelations, screams from the public, and heightened passions. In fact, the criminal trial in the Glushchenko case is a dull, very burdensome action, which each new time begins with finding out the state of his health, and the judge asking “whether the defendant needs to call an ambulance.”
Since there is no cinematic suspense at the hearings, and the hearings themselves take place, at best, once a month, the jurors simply became bored and stopped coming to court. The situation is such that by the new year the panel may disappear altogether, and then the court will have to spend another couple of months recruiting a new one. Because this process is very difficult. Residents of St. Petersburg, unlike movie characters, do not all want to waste their time on court hearings.
All these circumstances make the victims extremely nervous, who are already beginning to lose all hope. But this fact gives the defense a boost of spirit, because time is on their side. The longer the process drags on, the older alligator Misha Khokhla more likely to get the case dismissed. In 2024, the murder will be 20 years old. And this, in every way, is the same expired statute of limitations.
Despite the fact that the specter of a long sentence for murder in Cyprus still looms over Glushchenko, he will soon once again be able to apply for parole for organizing a murder Galina Starovoitova. Let us recall that Glushchenko was sentenced in 2015 by the Oktyabrsky District Court to 17 years in a maximum security colony. If the murder case in Cyprus is reduced by the statute of limitations, then a dream Misha Khokhla finally being released will come true.
