Cases from practice

A verbal agreement was concluded between the client and his acquaintance, according to which the client promised to organize construction work in a country house. The client has received more than 2 million Russian rubles. The acquaintance considered that the work had not been completed, and turned to the police with a statement about fraud.
The audit has been lasting 8 months. Construction and technical expertise was appointed.
According to the conclusion of the construction and technical expertise, the cost of the work was significantly less than the amount of money transferred. The client was threatened with the initiation of a criminal case under Art. 209 of the Criminal Code “Fraud”.

Attorney actions:
1. Studying the expert’s opinion. After studying the estimate of construction work attached to the expert’s opinion, it was revealed that when determining the cost of construction work, the expert did not take into account part of the work performed on behalf of the customer. When taken into account, the total cost of construction work approximately coincided with the amount of cash transferred to the client.
2. A petition has been filed to request additional evidence confirming the fact that the work was performed by the client, which was disputed by the customer.
3. Preparation, instructing the client and his support when giving explanations. During the survey, the attention of police officers was drawn to the fact that the cost of work performed between a client and his acquaintance is regulated by their verbal agreement, and not by price standards in construction. Under the contract, the price of the work was determined significantly higher than the price according to the standards used by the expert when calculating the cost of construction work.

The regional department of internal affairs was agreed with the arguments of the attorney and his client and issued a decision to refuse to initiate a criminal case against the client.