The son of the owner of the Marton hotel chain has been arrested in Krasnodar.

The Krasnodar Regional Court refused to release Ivan, the son of Marton hotel chain owner Andrei Marchenko, from pretrial detention. He is also a co-defendant in the Prosecutor General's Office's lawsuit against Viktor Momotov, the former head of the Council of Judges.

As reported by "Caucasian Knot," on September 23, the Prosecutor General's Office demanded that 97 properties registered to Andrei Marchenko, the owner of the Marton hotel chain, and his son, Ivan Marchenko, be forfeited to the state. The Prosecutor General's Office's lawsuit states that Momotov was effectively a co-owner of the hotel chain registered to Marchenko, despite a ban on judges engaging in entrepreneurial activity. The lawsuit refers to Marchenko as a "Krasnodar criminal representative." A few days after filing the lawsuit, Momotov resigned. On September 30, it was announced that a court in Krasnodar had arrested Andrei Marchenko on fraud charges.

The arrest of Ivan Marchenko, who, like his father, is a businessman, was announced on October 1: the Krasnodar Regional Court heard his appeal of the arrest decision made by the Oktyabrsky District Court of Krasnodar, refusing to amend the judgment. Mediazona drew attention to the information about the arrest of Marchenko Jr. in the regional court's records (included in the register of foreign agents by the Russian Ministry of Justice).

Ivan Marchenko is charged with fraud and money laundering on an especially large scale (Part 4 of Article 159 and Part 4 of Article 174.1 of the Russian Criminal Code).

Also on October 1, new details about the charges brought against Andrei Marchenko emerged: he is also accused of tax evasion, and the businessman was also accused of desertion and bribery, Kommersant reports.

The charge of desertion during an armed conflict stems from the fact that in 2023, Andrei Marchenko signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense to participate in military operations in Ukraine. According to the publication, he was supposed to serve as a gunner in a reconnaissance company stationed in Grozny. The prosecution claims that Marchenko served "only on paper," but in reality, he spent his time at his own discretion in Kuban, other regions of the Russian Federation, and abroad, illegally receiving money for his service, as it were, from May to October 2023.

The bribery charge stems from Marchenko's payment for renovations to the cardiology department of the 1602nd Military Clinical Hospital in Rostov-on-Don. Investigators believe Marchenko was declared unfit for service in December 2023 for this. However, the Central Military Medical Commission of the Main Center for Military Medical Examination of the Ministry of Defense in July 2024 did not confirm his cardiology diagnosis.

Andrei Marchenko himself, according to his lawyer, Ivan Dvorovenko, categorically denies all charges. The defense stated that the charge of desertion (Article 338 of the Russian Criminal Code) was later reclassified as unauthorized absence from duty (Article 337 of the Criminal Code), and the charge of bribery of military hospital officials was dropped altogether, with the case dismissed due to lack of evidence.

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