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Sellers of Aircraft Spares Accused of Counterfeit
Russia’s prosecutors charged SB-120 Sheremetyevo General Director Alexey Surikov and Chief Engineer Viktor Gamayunov with fraud, document forgery and rendering services that are not in line with the safety requirements. SB-120 Sheremetyevo has been supplying spares to regional airlines since 1999. Surikov and Gamayunov, who are in custody now, don’t admit guilt and call the criminal case “an absurd set of circumstances.”
On August 22, 2006, Russia’s Prosecutor Office initiated a criminal action against Alexey Surikov and Viktor Gamayunov from SB-120 Sheremetyevo and sanctioned their arrest on charges of fraud, document forgery and selling the goods/rendering services that don’t meet safety requirements. The action was brought “on finding out technical mechanisms of poor quality designated for the aircraft,” the prosecutors said.
For SB-120 Sheremetyevo, the troubles started once Tu-154 crashed near Donetsk and A310 crashed in Irkutsk airport past summer, said one of the employees on condition of anonymity. At that time, Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov committed the Federal Aviation Agency to focus on suppliers of parts and components for aircraft. Russia has about 1,500 similar firms today.
In response to Ivanov’s order, Federal Aviation Agency’s chief Alexander Yurchik submitted a report to the prosecutors, drawing their attention to the counterfeit product allegedly stored in the warehouses of SB-120 Sheremetyevo.
“Nowadays, the mess is complete in the system of civil aviation management and there is no way to fight counterfeit, as there is no certificate for deliveries of aircraft components,” the employee said.
Having searched the offices of SB-120 Sheremetyevo, investigators gathered enough data on airlines and producers dealing with the firm. Of more than 150 answers to inquiries sent by the prosecutors to producers of spares, only two enterprises didn’t confirm origin of the parts. In SB-120 Sheremetyevo, they say the prosecutors withheld those two responses to find grounds for the arrest.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 01, 2006
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