Sasha Chance. Persecution of Georgy Vins' son Peter Vins in Russia
Georgy Petrovich Vins is a bright, extraordinary personality and a major figure in the evangelical movement in the USSR. He was the secretary of the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, the so–called “Initsiativniks”. Twice the Soviet authorities tried to silence him, placing him behind barbed wire in the Urals and in Yakutia.
In 1975, G.P. Vins was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment. Four years later, in mid-1979, he and four other dissidents (Alexander Ginzburg, Eduard Kuznetsov, Valentin Moroz, and Mark Dymshits) were exchanged for former UN employees Chernyaev and Enger, who had been arrested by US intelligence services in October 1978 for espionage.
For the 25th anniversary of the deportation, Tatyana Golovina did an interview with Georgy Vins’s daughter. For those who haven’t read it – I recommend it. But in this post I want to draw my readers’ attention to the fate of Georgy Petrovich’s son – Peter, who in the 90s returned from the USA to Russia, founded and developed his own business and … ended up under the press of the now Russian justice system (if that term is appropriate here).
In truth, and perhaps unfortunately, Peter is suffering not for preaching the Gospel, like his father and grandfather, who was shot in 1937, but for…
The founder of the Andrei Sakharov Prize “For Journalism as an Act of Courage”, entrepreneur Peter Vins, is accused of tax evasion on an especially large scale. The maximum punishment under part 2 of Article 199 of the Criminal Code with which he is charged is six years of imprisonment. The decision on the businessman’s arrest in absentia was made on December 15 of last year by the Dorogomilovsky Court of Moscow. Currently, Vins is in Latvia. According to the entrepreneur himself, the entry into force of the district court’s decision could become grounds for an extradition request to be made.
The charge against Vins was brought in absentia. According to the investigation, he deliberately evaded payment of value-added tax from the organization he headed, LLC “Vinland-XXI Century”, for the period from January to August 2007 in the amount of over 3.34 million rubles. On August 20 of last year, Vins was put on the federal wanted list, and on October 2 – on the international wanted list.
For those who can’t watch the video – the transcript:
I was born in 1956 in the city of Kiev. In 1976 I joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. The first time I was arrested was on December 8, 1977, at the railway station in Kiev, when I was traveling to Moscow to participate in a demonstration on Pushkin Square on Human Rights Day on December 10. I went on a hunger strike, it lasted 21 days, after which I was released. The second time I was arrested on February 15, 1978, I was sentenced to one year of imprisonment on the official charge of parasitism.
My grandfather, a Protestant minister, was a US citizen, came to the USSR after the revolution to carry out missionary activity, for which he was convicted three times and in 1937 shot in prison in Omsk. Later, in the 1960s, he was twice rehabilitated. My grandmother, Lydia Vins, at 64, already ill with cancer, was convicted for religious activity and sentenced to three years in camps.
My father, Pastor Georg Vins, was the leader of the independent Baptists in the USSR, was first sentenced to three years in camps in 1966. The second time he was sentenced in 1974 to ten years, of which he actually served five in prison, because in 1979 he and four other dissidents were exchanged for two Soviet spies arrested in the USA and sentenced there to 50 years of imprisonment each. In May 1979 my father was stripped of Soviet citizenship and expelled to the USA. In 1982 my father was invited to a reception at the White House, where he met with Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter; he also met with Margaret Thatcher. In the 1980s, my father was rehabilitated and by decree of USSR President Gorbachev his Soviet citizenship was returned to him.
I, like all members of our family, was told by KGB officers that we had a few weeks to leave the territory of the USSR, so in June 1979 we ended up in the USA, where we lived in Boston. In 1984 I received US citizenship.
In the summer of 1993, I came to Russia to work, where I created my own business. In 2001, with the consent and approval of Elena Bonner, I established the annual Andrei Sakharov Prize “For Journalism as an Act of Courage”. The chairman of the prize’s jury is the head of the Russian Glasnost Defense Foundation, Alexei Simonov. The jury, besides Russian citizens – well-known journalists and cultural figures – includes Pilar Bonet, correspondent of the Spanish newspaper El Pais; Gregory White, head of the Moscow bureau of the Wall Street Journal; Susanne Scholl, head of the Moscow bureau of the Austrian television ORF.
In 2006, I was awarded the Ukrainian Order “For Courage” 1st class for participation in the activities of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.
01.02.2010
An Open Letter to Mr. Barack Obama, President of the United States
Dear Mr. President of the United States, we appeal to you with a request to help protect U.S. citizen and Russian native Mr. Peter Vins from wrongful persecution in Russia. We believe that both our countries can rightfully be proud of him.
Currently Mr. Peter Vins resides in Latvia, where he is awaiting arrest and deportation to Russia at the request of the Russian authorities.
In the autumn of 2008 and in December 2009, Mr. Peter Vins sent letters to the President of Russia asking for help. The first of these was recently published by the Russian media. Vins has recently submitted the second one for publication.
On January 15, 2010, Mrs. Elena Bonner, the widow of academician Andrei Sakharov, addressed an open letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in defense of Mr. Peter Vins. This letter has also been published by the Russian media.
Mr. Vins is a citizen of the United States.
We ask you, Mr. President of the United States, to familiarize yourself with the history of persecution in the USSR and Russia endured by three generations of Peter Vins’s family, including himself.
We hope that this story will resonate with you and evoke your sympathy, and that Mr. Vins’s principled civic and legal stance, which commands our respect, will also earn your respect.
We expect and believe that you will take steps to protect Mr. Vins from the arrest that threatens him and to ensure that he and his campaign “Vinland” can continue to work peacefully in Russia. Perhaps it will suffice to draw the attention of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to the fact that the case of Mr. Vins is of interest to the United States.
Today Mr. Peter Vins needs the protection of the country of which he is a citizen.
Respectfully,
Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group
Lev Ponomarev, Executive Director of the All-Russian Movement “For Human Rights”
Boris Nemtsov, Member of the Bureau of the United Democratic Movement “Solidarity”
Garry Kasparov, Chairman of the United Civil Front
01.02.2010
Elena Bonner’s Letter to Dmitry Medvedev on the Case of Peter Vins
To the President of the Russian Federation D. A. Medvedev
January 15, 2010
Mr. President!
I am writing you this open letter in response to your greeting to the International Conference “Sakharov’s Ideas Today,” held in Moscow in December 2009. In your greeting, while wishing success to the participants of the conference, you said that you share and support Sakharov’s ideas. They are concisely reflected in his Nobel lecture “Peace, Progress, Human Rights.” The first two words of this title – “peace” and “progress” – relate to all humanity. But “human rights” is about each individual person, his life, his freedom, dignity, and so on in order – all thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
So I am writing to you about a person. This is Pyotr Vins. Consider that I am writing on behalf of Sakharov, because Sakharov for many years defended Pyotr Vins, his father, and his mother, and wrote about the tragedy of three generations of this family. In Sakharov’s “Memoirs” and “Diaries” there are 25 mentions (I specially counted by the index) of members of this family and references to Sakharov’s letters in their defense. Pyotr’s grandfather (also Pyotr) served time in Soviet camps twice, and in 1937 was shot; his father served time twice; his grandmother and Pyotr himself – he was young – served time only once each. A criminal family? Repeat offenders? No, simply Baptists belonging to its nonconformist wing.
In the 1960s, Pyotr’s grandfather was posthumously rehabilitated. In May 1979, Pyotr’s father, Pastor Georgi Vins, along with five other political prisoners, was exchanged for two Soviet spies. Following him, members of his family were expelled from the USSR. During the Gorbachev period, Georgi Vins was rehabilitated and his Soviet citizenship was restored.
The younger Vins – Pyotr – studied in Boston. Upon completing his education, he went into business. As an American citizen, he could have done so in any country. But he decided that he would work in Russia.
His company soon became a profitable medium-sized business. Then he approached me with a request to consent to establishing the Sakharov Prize “Journalism as an Action.” He spoke of how much Sakharov meant to him, and wanted in this way to express the gratitude of the entire Vins family for their many years of defense.
I gave my consent as the sole heir, according to Sakharov’s will, of his copyright, which includes the use of his name. I am a very old person, so I consider it necessary to say that, according to the same will, in the event of my death, the copyright of Sakharov passes to my daughter Tatyana Yankelevich. This means that in the future, no one will have the right to use Sakharov’s name without oversight.
The prize was established, and a jury was created. I declined to join it, believing that I am too close to the name the prize bears and might be biased.
The prize has been functioning since 2001. And every year, collections are published that include articles by laureates, nominees, and other most interesting works submitted for the competition. The last award ceremony took place on December 12 of the past year.
Now I regret my consent to the establishment of this prize. I should have understood that in a country thoroughly afflicted by corruption, there will always be people who, relying on the tacit approval of the authorities, will want to snatch away an enterprise that brings in income if it is associated with such an odious name. Unfortunately, that is what happened.
In September 2007, 15 people showed up at the office of the companies founded by P. Vins (the “Vinland” companies), identifying themselves as officers from the OBEP (Department for Combating Economic Crimes) of Moscow’s Northern Administrative District and as attesting witnesses. They said they had come to check financial and business activities but refused to present documents confirming their authority. They beat up the company’s lawyer, a woman who tried to stop them, sealed the safe, took financial documents and computers, thus paralyzing the entire work of the firm—effectively ruining it with their raid.
Numerous procedural violations were appealed, and Peter Vins turned to the press. He gave an interview and published an open letter to you in Novaya Gazeta.
A few months later, a letter from the prosecutor’s office arrived at Vins’s office. It stated that the companies’ activities had been checked, no violations had been found, and the opening of a criminal case was refused due to the absence of corpus delicti. But in September 2008, the companies’ office was searched again by OBEP officers, but this time from another district—Moscow’s Western Administrative District (ZAO).
This time they presented documents confirming their authority to conduct the inspection. And they reassured the worried company employees: “Don’t worry, you are in no danger; we are only interested in Peter Vins.”
These inspections, interrogations of employees, and seizures of documents ended in December 2008 with the initiation of a criminal case on suspicion of tax evasion by one of the Vinland companies under Article 199 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
And in August 2009, the criminal case concerning the fact of tax evasion by the Vinland company was reclassified into a criminal case against P. Vins.
The investigative authorities suggested that P. Vins come to Russia, testify, apologize for his publications in the press, and stand trial. Without waiting for an apology, in October 2009 the investigator issued a ruling declaring P. Vins wanted at the federal and international levels and sent a petition to the court to select a measure of restraint in the form of taking P. Vins into custody.
And at the very time when you were greeting the Sakharov conference, more precisely on December 15, very close to the conference venue, the Dorogomilovsky District Court sanctioned the arrest of Peter Vins, accused under Article 199, Part 2 (tax evasion by a legal entity).
This was already the third court. The first court (also Dorogomilovsky) refused to authorize the arrest, citing the groundlessness of the investigation’s request. The second court (Moscow City Court) overturned the first court’s decision and sent the case for a new hearing. All three courts took place in the defendant’s absence, as he is currently in Latvia. Vins’s lawyers filed a cassation appeal. There has been no response yet.
Such is the history of this case. A typical history, repeated hundreds, if not thousands of times with small and medium-sized businesses in our country.
I have no formal evidence that it is connected with Peter Vins’s establishment of the Sakharov Prize. But I have an inner conviction that it is. The first raid on Vins’s firms looked too much like the racket and demand (not in words) for a payoff, so common in this country.
The racketeers did not succeed right away. And it took two years to somehow formalize, or rather fabricate, a criminal case. And the disappearance during the searches of certain documents and computer data puts the lawyers defending Peter Vins in a difficult, if not hopeless, situation.
I won’t hide it—Peter asked me to appeal to you. He believes that the head of state who proclaimed “Freedom is better than unfreedom” can also protect freedom.
I am less optimistic. And therefore I advise him not to return to Russia, so as not to repeat the fate of Magnitsky or the many who were shot in Moscow and other entrance halls and in the wide squares of our cities.
And the prize? Well, there won’t be a Sakharov Prize “Journalism as a Deed” in Russia—what a disaster! But the life of a man whom Sakharov defended many years ago will be preserved.
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