A court has cleared a Russian businessman of document fabrication allegations. He was caught last year by the Guardia Civil in Torrevieja with a forged identity card and driver’s licence, which he claimed he had in order to conceal his genuine identity and avoid being apprehended and killed. He fled his home country in 2017 owing to a business conflict with a drug-trafficking criminal organisation that had links with Russian police.
The acquitted businessman, defended by lawyer Juan Antonio Espinosa Vañó, was the administrator of a construction company. He was shot in Russia by five masked individuals using a long gun. After a month in the hospital, he decided to go to Spain, where he sought sanctuary and lived without incident until last year, when the Guardia Civil detained him in Torrevieja on bogus documents. A few months later, in early December, unknown gunmen shot at his home in Orihuela Costa, while he was with his family, and more than twenty shell casings from an assault weapon were discovered at the scene.
State of necessity
The accused’s defence, which faced a request for eight months in prison, argued at trial that the exemption of state of necessity should be applied to the accused for carrying said false documentation, and questioned the identification carried out by the Civil Guard patrol, because the documents were in his car, and the lawyer argued that the accused did not identify himself with them, as the Prosecution claimed, but that they were taken from inside by agents.
In fact, the judge of Court Number 4 of the Criminal Section of the Orihuela Court of First Instance, situated in Torrevieja, emphasises in the acquittal decision that the defendant’s two documents were proven to be fake. However, she adds that “it has not been sufficiently proven that it was the accused who identified himself, using the false documents he was carrying in a bag in the vehicle he was driving.”
The ruling states as confirmed facts that on the afternoon of February 7th, 2025, a Guardia Civil patrol conducting a routine public safety check requested the defendant for his identification. The defendant stated that he kept his identification in a bag inside his car, where an identity card and a driver’s licence from the Czech Republic, both belonging to another individual, were discovered to be forged. However, the ruling states that it has not been properly demonstrated that “the defendant, knowing the documents to be false, proceeded to identify himself at that moment with said documents.”
The Russian businessman claims that the authorities grabbed his automobile paperwork after snatching his keys, stating that his identity card and driver’s license were phoney because he had been having troubles in Russia since 2016 and hasn’t been back since 2017 due to safety concerns. He was shot, and bullets are still buried in his legs. He further alleged that following the incident, the authorities in his country “didn’t treat him as a victim” and warned him that he would face troubles.
According to the verdict, the Torrevieja police who appeared at the trial could not establish “conclusively” that the defendant’s story was false. This might be appealed to the Provincial Court.
The judge writes in his ruling that it is a “merely formal falsehood, without significance for legal transactions.”
Ten months after being arrested in Torrevieja, on the night of December 6th, the accused was at his home in Orihuela Costa with his family when he heard numerous bursts of gunfire outside. He peeked out the window and noticed a dark automobile door close and speed away.
The victim reported the event to the Guardia Civil, and more than twenty shell casings from shots fired at his residence were found on the spot. The victim claimed that he had never had any troubles in Spain and described the shooting he received in September 2016 while at a car wash in Russia. He was the manager of a construction company at the time, and problems occurred after he paid for machines and materials that were never delivered. Five masked guys shot him with a long gun, and his injuries forced him to stay in the hospital for a month. After being released, he was detained and spent a day in jail until his lawyer showed that he was the victim and was entitled to the machinery and materials he had paid for.
Later, the complainant claims, he discovered that the person from whom he was seeking money belonged to a criminal organisation involved in drug trafficking and had ties with the police, so he was urged to drop the case. He then relocated to Spain with his family and had not faced any problems or threats until last year.
Regarding the shooting at his home in Orihuela Costa, the businessman says he has no idea who is to blame, but he has alerted the Guardia Civil that the people he had a disagreement with in Russia are hunting for him. In reality, he claimed that on multiple instances, they went to his parents’ and mother-in-law’s homes, pretending as police officials and enquiring about his whereabouts. Furthermore, on one occasion, they told his mother-in-law that they needed to know where he was to protect him because he owed a lot of money and “bad people were looking for him.”
The businessman ultimately told the Guardia Civil that he believed the persons seeking for him found his address through the Russian police.
