"GOD KUZYA" SENTENCED TO FIVE YEARS IN PENAL COLONY
The Presnensky court of Moscow sentenced Andrei Popov, known as "God Kuzya," to five years of incarceration in a penal colony of general regime. He was found guilty of fraud of a total of more than 7 million rubles and also of creating a noncommercial organization and infringing the person and rights of citizens (part 4 of article 159 and part 1 of article 239 of the Criminal Code of the RF).
His alleged accomplices Galina Markevich, Nedezhda Rozanova, and God Kuzya's civil law wife, Zhanna Frolushkina, received sentences by the court of four years and nine months, four years and ten months, and four years and eleven months of incarceration in a penal colony of general regime respectively. They were convicted of fraud of an especially great amount (part 4, article 159 of the CC of the RF).
When issuing the sentences, the court also satisfied 13 lawsuits of victims, recovering from those convicted more than 7,726,000 rubles.
Before the start of the sentencing, defense attorneys of the defendants were prepared for the fact that the defendants would be given real time. "The verdict will certainly be guilty; we have no exculpatory factors. Such is our judiciary," the defense attorney of Nadezhda Rozanova, Anatoly Pchelintsev, shared his predictions with BusinessFM. "But I would wish that the sentence would be minimal and the defendants would be released from the courtroom." The defense attorney acknowledged that he has conducted several trials in the same courtroom where God Kuzya was tried, and sometimes for murder the judges have given less than the prosecutor requested for the "pseudopriest." Earlier, during the debates of the parties, the state prosecutor demanded for Popov seven years in a penal colony and from five to six "real" years for his followers.
The reading of the verdict took three and a half hours. The "batiushka" endured ninety minutes of them standing, after which the judge permitted him to sit.
According to the indictment, Andrei Popov passed himself off as a priest, dressing in clerical clothing and proclaiming himself to be the "God Kuzya," maintaining that he was endowed "with divine knowledge and power." From 2007 until 10 September 2015, he conducted "ideological treatment of his followers, during lectures and personal meetings, proclaiming his teaching to be true and others to be false." The sect maintained a system of fines and penalties for so-called "ungodly" deeds—"crabs" and "pikes"—during which devotees were subjected to beatings, using a whip, leather belt, sticks, hands, or rubber sandals. The indictment listed five persons who received from 100 to 1200 blows from the God Kuzya. Another 15 were found to be victims of an episode of fraud totaling 7,385,000 rubles. They donated to the "God" from 20 thousand to 820 thousand rubles as donations for the construction of a church of the Life-Giving Trinity in the Troitsky district of the capital.
The defendants did not acknowledge guilt and their lawyers asked that their clients be acquitted because of the absence of the substance and event of a crime in their actions. In the opinion of defense lawyers, the voluntary contributions of people cannot be considered to be theft. Moreover, neither Popov nor the other defendants ever put a kopeck in their pocket. The church was not built because from the start construction was stalled because the artistic commission for the facades did not agree on a design and then protestors showed up. Local residents wanted to see a kindergarten or store in place of a church. The Darya company, which was engaged in construction, had to go to court with the residents, and then the criminal case was initiated.
According to Popov's lawyer Svetlana Krasovskaya, her client had received a written blessing from Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Alexis II for the creation of an Orthodox parish, which now is called the "sect" of the God Kuzya, and also for the construction of a church. At the concluding stage of the trial, the lawyer delivered these documents to the court. As regards the beating of citizens, the lawyers assured that the physical punishments were voluntary and could be considered to be a procedure of penance.
Incidentally, Popov himself insisted that he was not an imposter priest. According to his account, he was secretly ordained by Vladyka Pitirim, the metropolitan of Volokolamsk and Yuriev, who died in 2003 (Pitirim Nechaev—BusinessFM). Everything was done in secret because according to the canons of the Orthodox church a person with a disability (Popov is visually disabled) cannot be a priest. (tr. by PDS, posted 21 July 2018)
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