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The stamp of approval
At this point I should explain the general rules for compiling, checking and approving official documents. I will not give away any secrets, which I left behind in summer of 1994. This concerns procedure. If grounds to suspect a crime are received from one source, they should be immediately checked and corroborated from other sources. Information from a single source is not information.
Especially if it is obtained in the semi-criminal festering swamp that is Tambov Region finance in the early 21st century. Any source there will be out for himself while trying to set the cops, FSB or taxman onto rivals, plotting with everyone else against everyone else. Any investigator needs a plan for checking such information. Remember that list of leads to be followed up which Burtovoy himself originally drew up?
Any boss submitting a report by his subordinate assumes full responsibility for the latter's conduct by putting his stamp on it - the equivalent of his personal signature. In our case, Biryukov assumed that responsibility. No minor figure, but not Ananyev's boss. And it was all false, so what was his signature worth? No-one is held in custody for any length of time if the paperwork, like this report, falls apart in the very first searches and questionings. Unless it's a contract job.
Blackmail, official wrongdoing, even disappearances are in the remit of the Interior Ministry's regional directorate. So I have no idea what possessed the men at the FSB's headquarters to intervene in routine cases in Tambov Region and write up reports on them. It's clear, though, that this could only happen on orders from the very top.
Onwards. Once a detective has checked the source and obtained proper, i.e. documentary, corroboration, he reports not to the procuracy but to his superior. And it's up to his superior to ask the procuracy to act. This is elementary procedure as laid down in special in-house orders - a confidential instruction manual.
That Ananyev's report was in breach of this clearly shows the feverish speed at which the political police HQ was working as it coordinated the action against Yukos. If an official, especially one in uniform, breaks the in-house procedures then he gets bawled out over the phone. As we know, there is no bureaucracy more rigid than the military. Except the clergy.
So the result is that a timid senior lieutenant, his bosses baying for blood, wrote (or more likely had dictated to him) a wafer-thin case for someone else's superior officer. Within a single day this piece of paper crossed the desk of every top official in downtown Moscow, and by evening Pichugin was in jail. The wheels of repression were picking up speed. What happened next?
The prosecutor gets nervous
On 21 June 2003, the Basmannyy Court issued the arrest warrant. In the application for it, the Procuracy General wrote that there was evidence against Pichugin in the form of testimony from witnesses, victims and experts. On 29 February 2004, defence lawyers began examining the case and in early March discovered that on 21 June 2003 Pichugin's case had contained nothing at all! All it had was procedural papers - search records (not worth a brass farthing!), a custody record, and the order to open the criminal case. That was it!
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