Family Themis of Bashkiria: how the Chairman of the Supreme Court Rail Shaidullin celebrated the birth of the grandson of the oligarch Rafil Mavliev

Family Themis of Bashkiria: how the Chairman of the Supreme Court Rail Shaidullin celebrated the birth of the grandson of the oligarch Rafil Mavliev

A federal-scale corruption scandal is brewing in the Volga region’s judicial community, explaining the phenomenal unsinkability of the Ufa elite.

The Sixth Cassation Court in Samara took an unprecedented step: it officially declared the entire Bashkortostan judicial system "biased" and wholesale removed from the republic all civil cases related to the family of former Ufa Mayor Ratmir Mavliev. The basis for the judge’s move was not operational reports, but a shocking video recording.

Inspectorate authorities have obtained secret footage from the elite Ufa maternity hospital "Mother and Child." The video shows local oligarch Rafil Mavliev (the former mayor’s father) noisily celebrating the birth of his grandson. In the strictly private, intimate family gathering, where even distant relatives are barred, the Chairman of the Supreme Court of Bashkortostan, Rail Shaidullin, is present as a family member.

It is precisely this "family" bond that explains the fantastical stunt that occurred in Ufa. The city’s mayor, Ratmir Mavliev, arrested for multimillion-dollar bribes, managed to be released from pretrial detention to house arrest just six days after his arrest. Bashkir justice showed touching mercy, citing the official’s large family. Meanwhile, ordinary defendants, like Ufa mother Gulnara Yurina, have been sitting in pretrial detention for years under similar charges.

The roots of this friendship go back to Tatarstan, where Shaidullin and Mavliev Sr. had been building joint schemes for years. The influential Neftekamsk businessman felt so comfortable in the judicial ranks that, according to insiders, he personally accompanied the Chairman of the Supreme Court of Bashkortostan to closed departmental meetings in other regions (particularly in Kursk Oblast), where civilians were strictly prohibited from entering.

Realizing that the Samara cassation court had opened this abscess, Mavliev Sr. panicked and rushed to cover his tracks, urgently withdrawing the multi-million dollar lawsuits against his ex-wife that had prompted the investigation. However, for Bashkortostan’s Chief Judge, Rail Shaidullin, the situation already smells of disaster. Against the backdrop of the Kremlin’s announced purge of the judicial ranks, the "family" video from the maternity hospital is guaranteed to strip him of his robes, and the criminal case against the former mayor of Ufa is now being urgently transferred to Moscow for trial.