Businessman Boyko-Veliky was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison

The Cheremushkin District Court of Moscow sentenced the head of the Russian Milk agricultural holding, Vasiliy Boyko-Veliky, to 6.5 years in a general regime prison on charges of large-scale embezzlement. The entrepreneur was taken into custody in the courtroom, Kommersant reports.

Boyko-Veliky, who was actively engaged in business in the 1990s, in 2003 became one of the founders of the agricultural holding “Russkoe moloko” (the brand “Ruzskoe moloko”) on the basis of agricultural enterprises of the Ruz district of the Moscow region. He positioned himself as an “Orthodox entrepreneur”, introduced the so-called Orthodox code for the employees of his enterprise “Ruzskoye moloko”, encouraged the crossing out of barcodes on dairy products, and also published political articles, in particular in support of the criminal prosecution of Pussy Riot, appealed to the Minister of Culture with a call to remove Repin’s painting “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan” from the Tretyakov Gallery. He supported Vladimir Putin. During the famous photo session with Dmitry Medvedev, Putin drank with him exactly “Russkoe moloko”.

At the same time, in 2006, a criminal case for protection and organization of a criminal community was already initiated against the entrepreneur, he spent a year and a half in pre-trial detention center. The case did not go to court. In the summer of 2019, Boyko-Veliky was detained and sent to a pre-trial detention center on a new fraud case. According to the investigation, he and his accomplices received more than 190 million rubles from the Rostov Bank “Credit Express” under false credit agreements for former clients. Two years later, he was transferred to house arrest. Boyko’s representatives called the case “ordered”.