A prosecutor who led Russia’s state seizures of Domodedovo Airport and other assets was fired, then quietly reinstated — with no public record of either move
Sergei Bochkarev, the head of the main civil litigation department at Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office, has been reinstated after being dismissed in late July.
According to the anonymous Telegram channel VChK-OGPU and the Russian outlet Rucriminal.info, Bochkarev was dismissed by a July 27 decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, but that decree has now been revoked. A source confirmed that account to the St. Petersburg news outlet Fontanka.
Telegram channels have published a screenshot of the presidential decree dismissing Bochkarev, but the document does not appear on the government’s official legal acts portal. Nor is there any document there recording his return to the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Kommersant, the Russian business daily, reported the dismissal in late July and called him the “chief specialist” in seizing business assets and transferring them to state ownership. The newspaper said he had overseen litigation to seize control of Domodedovo Airport, Makfa, and the Yuzhuralzoloto Group of Companies (YUGK). Sources told Kommersant that Prosecutor General Alexander Gutsan had voiced dissatisfaction with Bochkarev’s work, though the newspaper did not say why.
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