The artistic director of the Gogol Center, who previously served as a witness in the case of embezzlement of budget funds, was taken from St. Petersburg to Moscow, he is charged with organizing fraud on an especially large scale. tells how events developed around the artist and why he turned from a witness into a suspect.

The Investigative Committee suspects Serebrennikov of organizing the theft of 68 million rubles

This money was allocated from the budget for the implementation of the pilot project "Platform". “We wanted to come up with something at the intersection of the currents of contemporary art - theater, dance, music and media, so that they intertwine with each other,” Serebrennikov said about his idea. For the work of the Platform, he founded a troupe called the Seventh Studio. Her general producer was, who worked part-time as the head of the Gogol Center, Yuri Itin was the general director, and Nina Maslyaeva was appointed chief accountant.

The first searches at Serebrennikov's house and at the Gogol Center took place back in May.

Three months ago, investigators announced that the director was a witness in the embezzlement case (then the alleged amount of embezzlement was 200 million rubles). A few days later, Maslyaeva and Itin were detained and taken into custody, and in mid-June, Malobrodsky. All three are suspected of fraud with the funds of the Platform.

Accountant Serebrennikova has already pleaded guilty

Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky also urged not to exaggerate in connection with the investigation. Serebrennikov, according to the official, has always been favored by the authorities, he definitely has nothing to be offended by. “I hope the investigation will be carried out as impartially as possible and without demonstrative harshness. Because creative people are more responsive to the form than to the content,” the minister stressed.

The Deputy Minister of Culture of Russia called the detention of Serebrennikov a sad situation. He noted that the Ministry of Culture will not control the fate of the Gogol Center in the absence of the director, since this is the task of the Moscow Department of Culture. The Moscow department announced that instead of Serebrennikov, Yulia Kalinina, the deputy artistic director of the institution for financial matters, would act as head of the theater.

We explain what caused the close attention of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation to the artistic director of the Gogol Center Kirill Serebrennikov and a private company associated with him.

On the morning of May 23, employees of the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia for Moscow came with searches to the apartment of the artistic director of the Gogol Center, Kirill Serebrennikov, as well as to the theater itself and the Winzavod center for contemporary art. According to investigators, in 2014, Serebrennikov took part in the theft of money from the Ministry of Culture allocated for the holding of the Platforma festival of contemporary art. But this is not the only episode.

According to the investigation, on February 1, 2014, the director of the Department for Support of Professional Art and Folk Art of the Ministry of Culture, Sofya Apfelbaum (now the director of the RAMT), entered into an agreement with ANO Seventh Studio, co-owned and artistic director of which is Kirill Serebrennikov. The company undertook to carry out the Platform project on the territory of the Winzavod as part of the popularization of contemporary art. For this, the Ministry of Culture allocated 66.5 million rubles.

In turn, on February 10, Seventh Studio signed two contracts for the provision of paid services with Infostyle LLC for a total of 1.28 million rubles. The company was supposed to sew costumes and deal with the technical support of the events, as well as prepare a report on the use of state subsidies during their holding.

As the investigation managed to establish, in fact, the events specified in the contract were not carried out, although the money was transferred to the accounts of Infostyle. A few months later, in October 2014, the company ceased to exist. In October, Sofia Apfelbaum suddenly left her post, having worked in the Ministry of Culture for eight years.

Searches within the framework of the initiated criminal case are just beginning - in total, the list contains 17 addresses, including the address of the ex-head of the department of the Ministry of Culture Sofya Apfelbaum, the current director of the Volkov Russian Drama Theater (Yaroslavl) Yuri Itin, who was previously the director of the Seventh Studio, as well as Anna Shalashova, who is now heading the company, and others.

Neither Serebrennikov nor Apfelbaum returned calls. The Moscow Department of Culture said they were not ready to comment on the searches in the Gogol Center under their jurisdiction. The Volkov Theater said that at the moment they are not being searched.

"Martyr" pays twice

ANO "Seventh Studio" could interest the investigators for another reason. According to the Kartoteka database, the co-owner of the company is Kirill Serebrennikov, and the director is Anna Shalashova, who works at the Gogol Center as an assistant to the artistic director, that is, Serebrennikov.

As SPARK shows, since 2013, Gogol Center has regularly entered into small government contracts with Seventh Studio. At the same time, in 2014-2016, this company received state contracts only from the theater.

According to Kirill Kabanov, chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, in this case one can speak of at least a conflict of interest, because in fact it turns out that Serebrennikov gave the state theater money to his company.

It doesn't matter if the artistic director or any leading person does it. This is a cultural institution, not a private shop that can buy from anyone. Often, a conflict of interest is a sign not just of offenses, but of abuses in the use of budgetary funds. And here there can be already criminal consequences, - the expert noted.

In 2015, the Gogol Center held an auction in the form of a purchase from a single supplier, as a result of which the Seventh Studio received a contract for the joint production of the play Martyr worth 3.1 million rubles.

At the same time, earlier the theater (also in the form of a purchase from a single supplier) signed a contract for staging personally with Kirill Serebrennikov.


After the searches, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation announced the initiation of a criminal case into the theft of 200 million rubles allocated from the budget for the development of art.

According to investigators, from 2011 to 2014, unidentified persons from among the leadership of the autonomous non-profit organization "Seventh Studio" stole budget funds in the amount of about 200 million rubles allocated by the state for the development and promotion of art.

bail bond

Problems have haunted the Gogol Center for several years now. In April 2015, the head of the Moscow Department of Culture Alexander Kibovsky said that the Gogol Center was mired in debt. The theater's debt to various organizations at that time amounted to about 80 million rubles, and only the status of a cultural institution in Moscow saved it from liquidation.

Shortly before this, Anastasia Golub was appointed the new director of the theater, who had been conducting an anti-crisis campaign for five months. According to Serebrennikov, by August 2015, accounts payable were paid off, the theater's expenses were cut and ticket sales increased. But the theater was still unprofitable.

In October 2015, after Golub left, Serebrennikov became not only the artistic director, but also the director of the Gogol Center. After that, the head of the department of culture, Alexander Kibovsky, said that it was Kirill Serebrennikov who was responsible for all financial decisions. At the same time, the artistic director of the theater himself said that the Moscow Department of Culture approved him as the first deputy Alexei Kabeshev, who will be responsible for the economic situation of the theater.

In March 2016, Serebrennikov said that part of the debt money to the theater was reimbursed by the department of culture in the form of a subsidy. He did not elaborate on the exact amount.

The infamous Gogol Center got involved in a story with losses of 80 million rubles, and in connection with this, the theater may close in the near future.

Earlier, the new director of the theater announced the financial difficulties of the Gogol Center Anastasia Golub.

It turned out that under the artistic director of the center - Kirill Serebryannikov - in the theater “There were no deductions to the off-budget fund and taxes on individuals”, and there was also a “lack of planned financial economic activity”.

Golub said that due to the current situation, she was forced to suspend the conclusion of contracts for new productions, but the performances announced in the repertoire would continue.

“The repertoire created by the artistic director of the theater Kirill Serebrennikov is in demand by the audience - this is the main indicator of the theater. But the absurdity of the situation is that with such high artistic standards, the economic performance is deplorable.”, she noted.

In general, the Gogol Center is a state budgetary cultural institution of the city of Moscow.

It used to be called the Moscow Drama Theater named after N.V. Gogol, but after the unexpected appointment of Serebryannikov in 2012, the theater changed its traditional name to a more “modern” one.

The former head of the capital's department of culture became the beneficiary of the appointment of the odious director to the post of director of the state theater Sergey Kapkov, which is also not surprising: Serebryannikov is considered a friend Ksenia Sobchak(and at that time it was Ksyusha who “hung out” with Kapkov).

After that, serious contradictions began within the cultural institution..

The theatrical troupe rebelled, outraged that a person who did not even have a higher theatrical education came to the theater management (Kirill Serebryannikov himself was a “physicist-mathematician” by education, and came to the theater as an “amateur”).

“The appointment of Serebrennikov as artistic director, calling for the overthrow of the principles of the Stanislavsky system, denying the Russian psychological theater, is a powerful impetus to the death of the Russian theater”, the actors said in their open letter.

After the demarche of the actors, Serebryannikov simply invited the troupe to "write statements", and he himself moved abroad for the duration of the scandal.

And then it became known about the reformatting of the theater into the Gogol Center with three resident troupes, programs of film screenings, concerts, lectures and open discussions.

In general, in this whole dark story, there may be several “skeletons in the closet” hiding at once..

Kirill Serebryannikov himself is a very freedom-loving figure with very non-standard views on Russian reality.

He repeatedly became the object of sharp criticism from the cultural and political community, for example, for the use of homosexual images and, in general, excessive enthusiasm for "stage debauchery."

Serebryannikov shares "creative" views Marat Gelman and other popular "gallery owners".

It is not surprising that various rumors circulate around his person, including private accusations of non-traditional sexual orientation. Yes, and he himself is much more likely to add fuel to the fire: for example, in February 2013, answering a question from The New Times magazine, Serebryannikov openly supported homosexual teenagers.

And it is not surprising that films about history have already been presented at the Gogol Center Pussy Riot or, for example, the scandalous film about LGBT children "Adele's Life", or staged performances with "propaganda of homosexuality and pedophilia", as Yevgeny Fedorov, a deputy and a tireless fighter against Orangeism, declared about the production of "Thugs".

Another scandal erupted in 2013, when it became known about Serebrennikov’s intention to make the film “Tchaikovsky” according to his own script, where, as you probably already guess, the great the composer should have been presented precisely from the position of his non-standard sexual orientation.

Serebryannikov even "punched" funding for Tchaikovsky: the Ministry of Culture allocated 30 million rubles out of the required 240 million to support this project, but because of the scandal that erupted, the Cinema Fund refused to further finance the filming of the picture.

Now Serebrennikov is talking about his intentions to seek funds for the project abroad. And I won't be surprised if he finds support there - so, as you know, there is a special attitude to the PR of famous homosexuals. Especially if you can kill two birds with one stone - and humiliate the image of the great Russian composer, and once again promote gay propaganda among Russian viewers.

It is possible, by the way, that Kapkov's high-profile resignation was partly due, among other things, to the personnel policy that he pursued as an official responsible for the capital's culture.

As for Serebrennikov, as practice has shown, his “conceptualism” and passion for LGBT promotion only led the Gogol Center to an economic default.

0 August 22, 2017, 15:30

Kirill Serebrennikov

On the night of August 22, the Investigative Committee of Russia, a 47-year-old director, is suspected of embezzling "at least 68 million rubles." The detention took place in St. Petersburg, where Serebrennikov was on the set of the film "Summer" about Viktor Tsoi. The director of the "Gogol Center" was taken to Moscow. So far, the Investigative Committee has not yet applied to the court with a request for arrest, but soon Kirill Serebrennikov should be charged. The case against him was initiated under the article on fraud on an especially large scale, which involves up to ten years in prison. As a preventive measure, Serebrennikov can be sent to a pre-trial detention center or put under house arrest.

Detention of Kirill Serebrennikov, one of the leading domestic film and theater directors and artistic director of the Gogol Center (now suspended from work),. Many domestic cultural figures, journalists, politicians and Serebrennikov's colleagues have already come out in his support. Also, the network began collecting signatures for the release of the director.

Kirill Serebrennikov

A few hours after Serebrennikov's arrest, a petition was created on Change.org in support of the director. Its authors believe that Serebrennikov is being persecuted for political reasons:

We demand an end to the criminal prosecution of Kirill Serebrennikov and his team for political reasons. Artists should have the right to freely express their opinions. It is guaranteed to them by the Constitution of our country. Law enforcement and investigation agencies should not turn into a club to intimidate those who disagree with the policy of the authorities. Stop the political persecution of Kirill Serebrennikov!

— written in the petition. So far, 1,500 people have signed the petition.

Alexei Kudrin, former Russian finance minister (Twitter)

The arrest of the director is clearly an excessive measure before the trial, especially after the words of the president about the excessive arrests of entrepreneurs

Liya Akhedzhakova, actress (for RIA Novosti)

Terrible news. This thread is greetings from Meyerhold. I do not understand what will happen next? Probably, we will crawl on our knees to the tsar-father. After the search, they took away his foreign passport, they are as cunning as the world has never seen, they have colossal experience: remember Meyerhold or Mandelstam, even Yesenin died in torture.

Evgeny Stychkin, actor (for Kommersant)

This defies any explanation. Everyone knows that there were performances. Why, to whom did Kirill cross the road, why was he chosen as such a demonstrative action? A man of art is subjected to almost unprecedented persecution in our modern history. Why can't the government protect him? We have the presumption of innocence, so let them first prove that something exists, let all opinions be heard, and then something will happen. You can’t take a person, tear him out of his life and force him to go through all this. This is very scary. If there is a task to impress us, then they certainly achieved this goal, this task is solved.

Yuri Grymov, director (for Kommersant)

Theater is a very complex mechanism. This is a big responsibility - salaries, production, storage, a lot of complex things. And, to be honest, I have never felt on myself, and, I think, few people have really felt the facts of some kind of political or creative pressure. If there are financial violations, then the investigation will deal with it. Why was Malobrodsky suddenly fired then? We knew that there were some violations. Therefore, there is a difficult situation here, which should be clarified by an absolutely honest investigation, moreover, a public one. Of course, a very large amount is presented - for the theater this is a lot of money. Therefore, I think that time will tell, and the investigation, I hope, with such publicity, will be as open and honest as possible.

Nikolai Svanidze, TV journalist, historian, chairman of the commission on civil rights of the Human Rights Council (for Interfax)

It is not clear why they treat him so brutally. Is he a rapist, a serial killer, a danger to society? Why should he be detained? He is an absolutely law-abiding citizen, not prone to either escape or violence. Why is it necessary to limit the personal freedom of a citizen?

Pavel Lungin, director (for "Echo of Moscow")

It seems to me that we see once again that our law enforcement agencies do not back up, they cannot show flexibility. Of course, there is no need for an arrest. Cyril does not leave anywhere, he works. He is here, he goes to all interrogations, writes explanations. It seems to me that this is excessive cruelty, some kind of vindictive cruelty.

Nikolai Kartozia, CEO of the Friday TV channel (Facebook)

You may consider me a naive fool, but I do not believe that my friend Kirill Serebrennikov is a swindler. I forbid myself even to think so. And you, if you are my friends and friends of Kirill, please do not make assumptions. After all, everything that we have been told so far has not been proven, semi-proven. Where are the facts? Kirill is an amazing person and a huge talented soul. Whatever happens in the denouement... Uncle Kirill, I am your friend and I won't deny it. There will probably be a big cleaning of the friend tape today. Well, for the better. People like to "assume" it's part of the human in us. But there are assumptions that blacken the soul and turn you into a toxic f ****. This will not be in my feed.

Pavel Bardin, director (Facebook)

The detention of Serebrennikov is yet another victory for the culture of violence over culture.

Nikita Kukushkin, actor of the Gogol Center

Friends! Stupid and unhappy people really work there. Mostly people are not talented, or people who have lost their talent. They are weak. There is no truth behind them. Those need to be helped. So it makes sense for them to worry. They are like bees with a sting in the ass. And we - enough to grieve! Flip the game.

Mikhail Idov, screenwriter, journalist (for the Dozhd channel)

I know exactly the same thing as you. I found out about what was happening about 20 minutes ago. All I can say is that two days ago my wife Lilya and I, as co-authors of the script for the film "Summer", were on the set of this film with Kirill Semenovich in St. Petersburg. Kirill was in a great mood, the work was going on, the work will continue, I'm sure. That's actually all. And so we are in great shock, of course.

Facebook source

Instagram photo

On August 22, 2017, Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov was detained on suspicion of fraud.

According to the Investigative Committee, the department has not yet applied to the court with a request for arrest. He should be charged soon. According to investigators, in 2011-2014 the director organized the theft of "at least 68 million rubles" allocated for his theatrical project "Platform".

At the same time, it is already known that the case against Serebrennikov was initiated under part 4 of article 159 (fraud on an especially large scale), which involves up to ten years in prison. According to press sources, Serebrennikov may be placed in a pre-trial detention center or placed under house arrest.

Today, the Russian press, citing sources in the UK, writes that “in the case, there are, among other things, testimonies not only from Maslyaeva, but also from other persons. The investigation has collected enough grounds for his [Serebrennikov's] status to change from a witness to a suspect.”

Testimony in a criminal case against director Kirill Serebrennikov was given by several employees of the accounting department of his theater company Seventh Studio. This was reported by Interfax with reference to an unnamed source.

The interlocutor of the agency said that not only the arrested former chief accountant of the company Nina Maslyayeva gave testimony, but also an employee of the accounting department Tatyana Zhirikova and "other persons"

Before that, the director gave the law enforcement officers a passport. Recently Serebrennikov's house and the Gogol Center were searched. Serebrennikov then took part in the case as a witness, the investigators released him after interrogation.

Recall that on May 24, Putin clearly said that the searches at Serebrennikov's were carried out by "fools." Later, on June 15, on the Direct Line, Putin once again stated that it was “absurd” to conduct searches with force support in the theater.

Recall that in early August, the former accountant of the Seventh Studio, Nina Maslyaeva, who was detained earlier, said that Serebrennikov, together with Alexei Malobrodsky and Yuri Itin, created this theater company to “implement criminal intent” to embezzle allocated budget funds.

As a result of this investigation, the prosecution against the defendants in the criminal case, according to a new assessment, the damage amounted to 68 million rubles. Earlier it was about the amount of 3.5 million rubles. One of them concerned the fact that the Seventh Studio allegedly received money for the performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, but did not stage it. At the same time, the production was on the "Platform" and in the "Gogol Center" headed by Serebrennikov.

The investigation intends to charge Kirill Serebrennikov with committing the specified crime, as well as to resolve the issue of choosing a measure of restraint.

In addition, the media said that the companies of the infamous artistic director received state contracts in his own theater for 4.8 million rubles.

"The investigation found Kirill Serebrennikov's apartment in Germany. According to the telegram channel Mash, the real estate in Berlin cost the Russian director 300 thousand euros. The apartment was bought on May 9, 2012, when the Ministry of Culture was financing the Seventh Studio," the journalists said.

“We also managed to establish schemes for withdrawing budget money under fictitious contracts for the provision of services. Judging by the documents, Seventh Studio purchased paper, gift sets, alcohol, but the contracts turned out to be leftist, no services were received. "garbage heaps". Now the investigation finds out what exactly the withdrawn money went for, "they added.

As Nina Maslyaeva, an accountant at the Gogol Center, who is suspected of fraud, explained that she, on the orders of Itin, Serebrennikov and Malobrodsky, “entered false data into the financial statements.”

Recall that the case itself regarding the embezzlement of public funds in the Gogol Center started in May 2017. The searches in the theater attracted the attention of the public and the media, and for the liberal cultural intelligentsia was truly a shock, followed by loud protests and accusations of harassment.

In fact, there is a qualitatively new scheme. It is necessary to create some kind of organization that nominally should be engaged in cultural education and for this purpose to draw funds from the state. But adjust the corresponding reporting for this.

Serebrennikov and company did not. It is worth recalling that claims against him arose before 2014. The police came to him about the play "Thugs" and the compliance of this performance with the legislation of the Russian Federation in terms of public morality and morality in 2013.

Later, the director was indignant about the "censorship", the fact that "there is not enough air" and agitated everyone to leave the implacable opposition. Now they write in the telegram that "we are expecting a new wave, even a tsunami of excuses, explanations, hand-wringing, open letters," to break ", as well as giggles of propaganda "this one cuts his wife, that one wrings out the phones, the third daughter takes off her naked, and these steal." However, we have already seen all this from Belykh. But he is sitting, a tramp.

The authors of the Mash channel write that "Kirill Serebrennikov is not doing well. In 2014, our artistic director with his ANO" Seventh Studio "signed an agreement with the Ministry of Culture and received subsidies from them for 66 and a half million rubles. With this money, it was only necessary to promote culture to the masses, namely to the regions of Russia.Seventh Studio in the same year signed several contracts for almost 2 million.

Guess the culture was eventually promoted to the masses? We can give you a hint: we still eat pancakes from a shovel, and Serebrennikov is threatened with a written undertaking not to leave the country or even worse.

According to the channel, "the company of ANO Seventh Studio, whose leadership is suspected of embezzling money from the Ministry of Culture, is registered in the apartment of Kirill Serebrennikov himself."

Of course, not without reason. There have already been facts that tenders at the Serebrennikov cinema were won by ... companies whose founder was Serebrennikov. Such data can be obtained from the Spark-Interfax database. The same ANO "Seventh Studio" and the fund "Territory", the founder of which is Kirill Semenovich, as well as IP Serebrennikov K.S. (OGRNIP 307770000588280), created by the full namesake of our hero over the past five years, won tenders worth almost five million rubles from the theater, which he himself manages.

And then to say, little things. Thus, in the theater under the direction of Kirill Serebrennikov, a number of tenders in the amount of 4.8 million rubles. won by legal entities (including IP Serebrennikov K.S.), whose founder is Kirill Serebrennikov.

Being in the public service, Kirill Serebrennikov continued to engage in commercial activities (including winning tenders from his own theater through the IP Serebrennikov K.S.).

At the same time, a lot of good and right things are happening in the Gogol Center, for example, a toothbrush is bought for 1399 rubles for the play "Martyr". Comments, as they say, are superfluous.