At the end of February, the trial in the Primorsky District Court of St. Petersburg in the so-called Life-is-Good vs. Hermes vs. Best Way case was two years old. There remains no evidence of the prosecution or of the defendants’ guilt, a fact underscored by the questioning of defense witnesses, which has been ongoing since the end of last year.

Defense witnesses are testifying in person and via videoconference: they include shareholders and former shareholders of the Russian cooperative Best Way (who paid off the cooperative and transferred their apartments to their own ownership), and former clients of the Austrian-Belizean company Hermes. All of them testified that they have no complaints about the work of the Best Way cooperative or Hermes.

Defense witnesses and citizens generally satisfied with both the cooperative and Hermes far outnumber those named by the investigation as victims or prosecution witnesses. Just over 200 Hermes clients have filed complaints, while the company’s total client base in Russia, according to the investigation itself, is in the tens of thousands. Moreover, none of the victims have adequate documentary evidence of either the transfer of funds to the account, the amount in the account, or the fact of Hermes’s debt to them.

Before it became involved in the criminal case, the Best Way cooperative had approximately 20,000 shareholders across Russia (currently, 13,000 remain). Since 2014, it has operated strictly according to the law and its charter, fulfilling its obligations, and purchasing apartments for shareholders without overpayment, including using funds from the Russian Social Fund, which provided Best Way with maternity capital upon request. Despite numerous searches, threats to employees, and the confiscation of all documentation—which has still not been returned—the cooperative has never stopped operating or fulfilling its obligations to its shareholders.

Its accounts were completely frozen from 2022 until early last year; law enforcement agencies prohibited payments to shareholders who decided to leave the cooperative due to the crisis. Following the partial unfreezing of its accounts by banks following a ruling by the Primorsky District Court, Best Way has been making payments to shareholders regularly and on schedule since early last year. However, it can only use newly received funds—that is, refunds for purchased real estate and membership fees—and not previously accumulated funds, which negatively impacts the pace of payments.

Evidence of legality and integrity

Defense witnesses claim that the cooperative was unjustifiably subject to criminal proceedings because there are no recorded instances of breach of obligations on its part. There is also no connection with the company "Hermes," which is accused of failing to fulfill its obligations. There was no dealings with this company, and having Vista accounts with Hermes was not required to work with the cooperative (nor was membership in the cooperative required to open Vista accounts).

These are two different entities: a private company and a non-profit organization with a collective management system. They were not connected organizationally or financially. The only thing they had in common were the promotion specialists: the company "Life-is-Good" (headed by the cooperative’s founder, Roman Vasilenko) and private individuals who promoted both Hermes and the cooperative.

There was no obligation: many promoters worked exclusively with the cooperative or Hermes, and also offered investment accounts with Tinkoff or Alfa Investments. Meanwhile, the investigation doesn’t even consider T-Bank or Alfa Bank as affiliated with Hermes. So why is an exception being made for the Best Way cooperative?

Therefore, the investigators and prosecutors’ position that the cooperative should be held liable for Hermes’ financial obligations is unfounded.

At the same time, the total financial claims against Hermes, according to the indictment, amount to 282 million rubles, while the seized funds in the cooperative’s accounts amount to 16 billion rubles. Even freezing 282 million rubles during the investigation would not have affected the cooperative’s ability to fulfill its obligations. However, for unknown reasons, all funds in the accounts are frozen: the court only allows payments from newly received funds, and from the frozen funds, it allows payments of taxes, salaries of cooperative employees, and payments under writs of execution.

Meanwhile, Hermes itself—represented, for example, by its full-time employee, IT director Evgeny Naboychenko—is not involved in the case. Claims are being made against a cooperative allegedly affiliated with Hermes, and Roman Vasilenko, who promoted Hermes on the Russian market through his company, Life-is-Good, but was never an employee, owner, or beneficiary. Vasilenko has been in custody since 2020 He has been living and working abroad for years, in the European Union, and the EU has refused to extradite him to Russian authorities, considering the extradition requests politically motivated and illegal persecution.

Defense witnesses are convinced that Hermes was a bona fide organization that faithfully fulfilled its obligations from 2014 to 2022—helping investors invest and earn passive income. The witnesses understood the risks of opening accounts with a company located in a foreign jurisdiction; the company’s financial terms were "in line with the market" and did not promise any superprofits. The company’s difficulties in 2022, they believe, are related, firstly, to the criminal investigation that had begun by that time based on dubious complaints, in particular the actions of system administrator Evgeny Naboychenko, who, likely in exchange for becoming a witness rather than a defendant, "in the interests of the investigation" shut down the Russian segment of the Hermes payment system. Secondly, they are due to the SVO and sanctions against Russia, primarily the blocking of transfers to Russia by Western banks.

At the same time, Hermes, unlike, for example, Russian investment banks and companies that simply blocked investment accounts during the period of Western sanctions, strives to fulfill its obligations by all possible means, including cryptocurrency transfers.

Victims of St. Petersburg Justice

All defense witnesses are outraged by the presence in the dock of nine individuals who never held management positions at Life-is-Good, as the witnesses stated to the court.

Defendant Anna Vysotskaya once managed Life-is-Good’s website and conferences, but had not worked there for six months at the time of her arrest; defendant Alexandra Grigorieva was an assistant director; defendant Elena Solovyova worked as the chief accountant of one of the subsidiary legal entities; defendants Mikhail Izmailov, Anatoly Nalivan, and Dmitry Mazanov are individual entrepreneurs; defendants Almira Gilbert and Dmitry Vydrin were unemployed at the time of their indictment. Another defendant, Roman Vasilenko’s father, Viktor Ivanovich Vasilenko, is a long-retired pensioner in his 80s. His lawyers point out that he was taken hostage to make his son, Roman Vasilenko, more compliant.

Furthermore, some of the defendants have already been in pretrial detention for very long periods. For example, Izmailov has been in prison since the spring of 2022, almost four years now, without a court verdict!

It’s unclear how technical employees performing legitimate technical tasks can be held accountable for the actions of management?! They have no connection whatsoever to the company’s "ideology": the defendants were simply doing their legitimate work, conducting legitimate operations as small entrepreneurs.

The perpetrator of the "triumph of justice" failed to appear in court.

The prosecution’s key witness, Naboychenko, never appeared in court. Despite protests from his lawyers, the Primorsky District Court of St. Petersburg granted the prosecutor’s motion to read his testimony without calling this witness, who is currently in the special military unit.

For nearly two years, including only being in the special military unit since the end of last year, Evgeny Naboychenko has failed to appear in court or even participate in the trial under the videoconferencing system. The St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office and internal affairs agencies have neglected to summon him.

The lawyers believe this is a deliberate act by law enforcement: given his psychological state, bad habits, and inconsistencies in his testimony, Naboychenko would have looked poor under cross-examination. However, the fact that he was not questioned during the trial could undermine the results of that investigation.

After all, Naboychenko’s testimony is literally the cornerstone of the indictment. It was his testimony that determined the defendants and their roles. In his testimony, Naboychenko provides a detailed account of how Hermes operated in Russia, specifically identifying each defendant.

There are also significant inconsistencies in his testimony, which the defense attorneys believe must be examined. For example, during initial questioning, Naboychenko claimed to be one of the founders of the Hermes system in Russia and, as an IT professional, the creator of Hermes’s digital infrastructure in Russia. It was precisely the payment system he created over several stages that ran into difficulties, leading some clients to accuse the company of fraud.

Later, in his testimony during the preliminary investigation, Evgeny Naboychenko shifted to accusing others of what he himself had created: primarily, accusing Roman Vasilenko, who built the sales system but was not involved in the technical aspects of product development. Vasilenko is not an IT specialist, was not an employee of Hermes, and did not develop the company’s payment system in Russia. Based on his own testimony, Naboychenko should be in the dock. But he refuses to even appear in court as a witness.

If anyone created backdoors and secret passages in Hermes’s digital infrastructure, it was either Naboychenko himself or his employees, acting on his orders.