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I was born in the Soviet Union, in a place where gangs dominated the streets.

For a child there were two options the first, being a member of a gang and the second, not leaving the house to avoid being beaten by gang members.

That’s why I chose the second option: And I dedicate myself to training 6 hours a day of boxing to learn to fight. I became a strong athlete, which allowed me to defend myself in the streets when necessary, realizing that my perseverance and training made me stronger and faster.

This way I can defend my dignity and freedom of my life and I learned that for freedom we have to fight. This tremendous experience of my childhood stayed in the distant past but we know that everything in life has its purpose. Many years later our family returned to be the object of the persecution of new enemies. In Russia, as successful entrepreneurs we were NOT in agreement with the policy of the dictator Putin, we do not want to lose our freedom of political opinions and that is why we suffer political persecution. We find temporary help in Guatemala changing identities to protect our lives.

Here in Guatemala we are faced with equally cruel but much more astute enemies who do not fight with fists but with lies, falsehoods and judicial manipulations dressed in disguises as servants of justice. The Russian criminal state managed to hire #CICIG and #FECI to persecute our family. They try to destroy us and the only way to save us is to learn to fight in these conditions –  hard and without fear. We fight the whole family together with the support of our friends that we find here in Guatemala .

When they captured our entire family 4 years ago, we felt betrayed by the people who brought us to Guatemala and made us believe that they legally work with the government of that time (Alvaro Colón) to process for persecuted foreigners – protection of the state, which it included changing the names and other personal information in the documents.  Marcos Cutino  and  Kennet Biderman  explained it very professionally, all this, in English, since we did not even know a Spanish word. It seemed logical to me. I needed to save the lives of my family from the political persecution of the Russian criminal state and I could not lose this opportunity, nor did I want to doubt very much if the documents were delivered to us in the state offices.

He thought: “If state offices are the one who processes and delivers these documents, with the other names that protect my identity from future persecutions that we did not even choose and as they are given to protected witnesses, then it is something serious and responsible. We do no harm to anyone, since we only want to survive.

It came out, that it cost us too expensive to trust these people. First days that we were imprisoned in the basement of the Court Tower were tremendous. There we spent the long nine days, without sleep, without eating, waiting for the first statement where I thought I could clarify to judges and prosecutors about the existence of a legal company ”  Cutino International   “, which has performed many procedures for foreigners deceiving them.

But it made me doubt a couple of visits from some lawyers on behalf of  Cutino  , who tried to convince me that  Cutino is  not to blame and that the documents were legal, but the Russian government found us and some Russian banks paid a lot of money to open criminal proceedings against our family and its goal is to punish us at the request of Russia . That time they repeated the word ” CICIG ” many times . They paid to them. Who are they? The lawyers made fun of my ignorance. What happened next confirmed his words. Nobody wanted to investigate  Cutino  with  Biderman nor to any person trafficker or document handlers. They wanted to persecute only our family with the final purpose – to extradite us to Russia .  

Years later we managed to obtain documents and evidence that opened our eyes and discovered the details of how the Russian criminal state  organized and directed persecution against us in Guatemala. The powerful names of Guatemala appeared that he did not know before.

It was Alfonso Carrillo who managed to convince  Iván Velásquez  in October 2014 that CICIG  would take our case.

Carrillo had a legal mandate from Gazprombank personally signed by  Andrey Akimov,  the very close person of  V. Putin  .

Since October 2014 –   CICIG has been in charge of our persecution. On November 10,  Iván Velásquez sent a request to  Thelma Aldana  so that FECI and personally Stuart Ernesto Campo Aguilar takes the case against us.

How much bribery has Velasquez received to spend so many resources of CICIG alone against our family of migrants?

It seems that the Russian banks paid enough to mobilize against our family to CICIG ,  FECI  ,  the highest risk judges  and even the judge of childhood  Maria Belen Reyna Salazar  to kidnap our son who just turned 3 years old and take him to the orphanage .

The next day the Russian Ambassador Nikolay Babich presented himself to my wife Irina and told him that the only option for us, to save our son, is to send him to Russia. Irina did not give up and continued the fight.  

Since we captured and included in the Migration case  , this case stopped being case against officials of  migration  and became the family case against  Bitkov  for the purpose of carrying out the harsh punishment which set us up Putin  .

His initial plan to extradite us – failed, because we at the beginning declared that we suffered political persecution, requested refuge, denounced the structure of  Cutino  and denied abbreviated procedure. From this moment our extradition was complicated and they decided to extend the process and in the end, condemn us with extradition to  Russia , as part of the sentence. In reality, this case never had any purpose to put an end to the criminal structures of human traffickers. 

Let’s analyze what was clarified and discovered by all these four years in the hearings and the procedural files. 

The illegal procedures of the documents for foreigners were extensive and regular in Guatemala  and were carried out through the state institutes, such as RENAP and the  General Directorate. of Migration. This is confirmed by the testimonies of the key witnesses, Migration workers   : Luisa Fernanda Cotton Castellanos and Carlos Rene Gómez Díaz,  where both say that  each week 3-4 foreigners passed through the process.   While we contacted the company Cutino International we have seen many other foreigners who have gone through the process Only in our process were 13 foreigners who have received false documents at the end of 2011. They were never arrested or wanted. According to the other complaint  RENAP DIG1158- of 2014   , it was discovered 108 foreigners who have received false documents for only two months in June, July 2014.

In all, we know that thousands of foreigners have obtained documents from Guatemala in the anomalous way.

Fake residence of Anna Chip signed by Mayra Veliz.

It is absolutely clear that this flow of foreigners in Guatemala, to obtain the documents, could not be done spontaneously. There are the structures that bring migrants to the country and offer them paperwork.

We are the only migrants who denounce this criminal structure and gave testimonies with lots of evidence.

In these testimonies we declare on the performance of the criminal structure of traffickers of persons and processors of false documents. We are victims of this structure directed by Marcos Cutino  ,  Kennet Biderman, Renato Severino . They had the legal companies like  Cutino International  that acted with the appearance of the legal companies that are engaged in immigration procedures.

They promoted on the Internet their advertisements of legal paperwork, they communicated with clients, invited them to Guatemala and accompanied them from the airport throughout their stay in the country, even in the paperwork. They acted openly and that gave certainty to the foreigners that process is really legal.  

At no time,  MP never investigated these structures that bring migrants to the country, although they had a lot of information about them.

There are several complaints, apart from ours, against the traffickers  Cutino, Biderman  and others. FECI and CICIG  have done everything to maintain impunity for these structures by excluding themselves from the investigations and thus we can identify the certain areas of impunity that CICIG and FECI  provided to the members of the criminal structures. 

The procedures were almost always carried out with certificates issued by different mayors. For our family, the cedulas were issued by mayors of  Guazacapan, Villa Nueva, Fraijanes   . From these cedulas the process was started and the cedulas were the basic documents for all the following process.

We discovered that the mayor of Guazacapan – Francisco Orantes also issued cedulas for the leaders of the Cutino International company  – for Marcos Cutino  and  Kennet Biderman  , with whom they have obtained the IPRs and passports of Guatemala.

 

In the files of the process we find signatures of these and other mayors in the cards of other foreigners, who were issued in the anomalous forms.

 Other basic documents were the certificates or certificates of naturalization or permanent residences, signed by the deputy directors of Migration.

In our case, these documents were signed by the deputy director of Migration – Mayra Yojana Veliz Lopez   .

This official, according to the investigation of the prosecution of administrative crimes, signed the huge amount of false residences for foreigners even though she worked in Migration very little time but she already had her seal and signature registered in the system.

Other deputy directors of migration and senior foreign and foreign ministry officials are also involved.

The most important stage was the issuance of a passport where the officials responsible for controlling the process gave them authorizations for the procedures. This was the case in Igor Bitkov’s HIT case, and that was the case in many other cases. The offices with all the information were sent to the General Directorate of Immigration and were immediately resolved by Deputy Director of Migration  Wolfang Janeiro Barrera Bravo and technician Julio Alberto Lopez Orozco  who sent their resolutions to continue the process and deactivate the HIT case with proof that all documentation is authentic.

HIT cases were also lifted in proceedings by many other foreigners. Corporación La Luz  , issued the passports in Guatemala for the contract with the government. According to testimony of José Samoyoa Cano  who was director of this company, for the time of his administration, for 2 and a half years it was more than 5,000 HIT cases, all were documented and sent to the Directorate of Migration and the MP and none was ever investigated. Why? Is it possible that thousands of the anomalous procedures were carried out without being investigated? 

The existence of this structure was always protected and supported by the  MP and in recent years by  CICIG. Mayra Yojana Veliz Lopez played a key role in this function, occupying the post of General Secretary of the MP and being close to Thelma Aldana and Iván Velasquez. As a result of their attitudes, we can see that thousands of migrants have obtained their fake identities from Guatemalans throughout the entire existence of the structure. The leaders of the structure including the members of the companies, senior immigration officials , mayors and several other key officials were never investigated or prosecuted.

We can conclude that the structure that brings migrants in Guatemala to illegally process new identities with all the legal appearance contains the following members: the legal companies that offer services for foreigners to obtain citizenship, which include people who speak English or other languages, to the expert lawyers of migratory procedures, the intermediaries between the companies,  RENAP and Migration ; senior officials of the  Directorate of  Migration  and  Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that give approval, sign the false certificates of the residences and naturalization of foreigners, monitor the procedures and resolve the alerts; the mayors of different municipalities that issue certificates to foreigners using the authentic passbooks, altering or usurping the data of other people; the high officials of the  MP that block or limit the investigations against the structure ( Mayra Yojana Veliz Lopez had double function as the deputy director of Migration and secretary general of MP); RENAP and Migration officials of different ranks who perform paperwork in state offices (their role is less important since all basic documentation is prepared and has all the appearance of legality) 

It should be noted that MP led by Thelma Aldana and Mayra Veliz and CICIG linked to FECI hindered and prevented investigations of the complaints filed by RENAP ,  Irina Bitkova , US company ” SABA FOUNDATION” against  Cutino International and identity forgers. All these complaints were dismissed or hidden.

The investigation of the RENAP complaint – DIG 1158-2014 , was carried out in the years 2014-2016, initially by the investigation department of RENAP and later by the department of administrative crimes of the MP led by Heidi Tamara de León .

In this investigation was discovered the full participation of Mayra Veliz whose signature appears in 74 false residences of foreigners, as it has done for Anastasia Bitkova. This investigation was suspended in the MP at the end of 2016 and  Heidi Tamara de León was threatened and dismissed along with other investigators and suffered persecution from Mayra Veliz. They did the same with the investigators of RENAP who have done research, dismissed them all and hid the investigation. Director of RENAP  Rudy Gallardo  , who initiated and procured this investigation was accused and captured for another reason.

With our complaint they did a trick, they warned us initially that it was wrong and we dismissed it but we filed another complaint and for a long time we demanded that they investigate it but they shelve it.

When our case returned to the attention of the US senators, our complaint, “magically” was found in the metropolitan prosecutor’s office in August 2018 and we were called to give testimonies and present evidence, what we have done.

In November 2018 I discovered what FECI and CICIG were hiding in the whole process – Mayra Veliz’s direct participation in the process, what she signed the permanent residence of my daughter Anastasia, also hid the other 24 people – officials who they signed the documents and the members of Cutino International who directly participated in the procedures. We discovered the tremendous fact that CICIG, FECI,  Thelma  Aldana, Francisco Sandoval and other prosecutors, for all these years that the process lasted, were covering the entire criminal structure.

Immediately, we filed another complaint against all these officials and prosecutors and against FECI prosecutors .   

This complaint was also transferred to the metropolitan prosecutor’s office and added to our complaint. There the surprise awaited us.

One day before the start of my new debate visit this office and the prosecutor Leonor Morales told me that she received an order from her bosses Olga Motta and Luis Archila   to file our complaints.

The pretext was that they can not continue with investigation until the process against us ends. They used the absolutely illegal argument.

We present the appeal before a judge to prevent this illegality and obstruction of justice. But it became clear that the people of the MP continue to lend impunity to Mayra Veliz and her accomplices.

The famous Migration case was actually a simulation of the investigation and justice with the purpose of covering the true criminal structure with Mayra Veliz.

Among 44 defendants were acquitted and dismissed – 5. Of the 39, who were convicted were: 3 members of my Bitkov family – the only migrants who have received documents for the structure; 1 notary; 1 trade unionist; 6 workers from the headquarters of passports (2 technicians, 4 delegates, with a salary of 2000 to 5000 QTZ), 2 workers of the company La luz who worked by contract with the government to issue the passports; 11 workers from the Migration headquarters at Aurora Airport (they were judged by the facts unrelated to the paperwork); 11 low-level RENAP workers (filers, file clerks with salaries of 2 to 4 thousand QTZ); 4 people qualified as coyotes who had no relationship with paperwork. So ,

Court of  Yasmin Barrios was directed by CICIG  . Without evidence, violating the laws, they condemned them all with maximum penalties to justify the brutal condemnations against our family.

Single mothers, sick people, humble and simple people – were thrown into jail immediately. I can not forget how a young woman in RENAP cried when she was pregnant and did not even work when the events that imputed her occurred. They substituted alternative measures for everyone, including my daughter and my wife.

They have not touched any significant and significant members of the structure: neither mayors, nor deputy directors, nor transferees, nor members of  Cutino International  . To nobody !

They did not care about the tragedy of the people who were sacrificed and condemned instead of being truly responsible.     

What they did with my family never happened in Guatemala, not before, not after. The 3 Colombian migrants were arrested at the Aurora airport with Guatemalan passports issued under other names. They were sentenced in 2012 to 2 years commutable with 5 Qtz per day.

A month after they condemned us, this same court of Yasmin Barrios sentenced two Salvadorian mareros to 5 years commutable for 5 QTZ per day for having false Guatemalan documents, issued with other names. Lately in 2018, in April in Panama it was arrested  Jhon Kenton Reyes Freeman  with a Guatemalan passport, issued under another name, who did not speak Spanish and never visited Guatemala. Curiously, nobody investigated how this passport was obtained. Freeman very fast was released with commutable sentence for 5 years and 5 QTZ daily. In none of these processes CICIG and FECI have not participated. That shows the anomaly he made CICIG and FECI madein the process against us. At the first trial they condemned me, my wife, my daughter to 19, 14 and 14 years of immutable prison, with a huge fine and expulsion from the country, which they have never done with other migrants.

All convictions of migrants for having false documents are illegal because the law exempts them from criminal responsibility, but nobody could, nor did they want to appeal, because it was a small fine compared to huge expenses for the process and impossibility of a migrant get good defense in a foreign country.

The migrants, who fell into this trap, for the most part are victims of this criminal structure of the traffickers of people and document processors, who deceived them by imitating the legality of the procedure. We are the only migrants who denounce this criminal structure and we are unique to those who condemned so cruelly. They have not touched the criminal structure, sacrificing lower-ranking workers.

The sentence against our family led to the investigation of the Helsinki Commission of the US Senate . The Senators received information about the collaboration between the CICIG and the Russian criminal state.

The key role in the juice research   Bill Browder – the creator of the Magnitsky Law and true defender of Human Rights, with whom my wife Irina communicated and informed from the beginning of the process about our tragedy in 2015.

The result of this investigation, on April 27 , the Helsinki Commission has conducted the hearing in the US Senate dedicated to our case where our lawyers Rolando Alvarado ,  Victoria Sando val and personally Bill Browder have testified before the Senators details of the case. Iván Velásquez  was invited to the audience but he refused to attend and give some explanations.

The consequences for CICIG were dramatic – their US funds were frozen for 5 months.

 One day before the hearing, my sentence was annulled by the Constitutional Court arguing that I am a migrant and the law exempts migrants from criminal responsibility for creating and possessing false documents and Judge Erika  Aifan ordered her to issue a new resolution.

However , Aifan supported and directed by the CICIG   issued the same resolution with new arguments, stating that there is no criminal structure that processed our documents and that we are not migrants.

In these days we discovered that Aifan , previously communicated with the Russian embassy through a criminal chamber and sent them the letter informing them about “the penalties provided” that may apply to my family.

   

 The judge committed a crime and we recused her. This recusal is not resolved until today. Room 3 of amparos was not satisfied with the disobedience of Aifan and has issued a due execution for Aifan , again it annulled his opening of judgment and ordered to the MP to investigate this judge by his evident personal interest in our case. Aifan , in these circumstances, again obtained the support of CICIG and the two presented their complaints in the  CC . This time three CC magistrates   violated their own previous resolution and accepted the judge’s complaint Aifanand its opening of judgment. That’s what it’s about in my previous article –Harlots of justice .

Velasquez believed that he can save his situation by condemning me again.

Although many of our resources were never resolved, they rushed through a new trial without meeting the basic procedural rules. In December 2018 the other High Risk Court chaired by Sara Yoc Yoc , held a debate again violating the law and due process with sole purpose to save the image of  Iván Velásquez and CICIG .

The judges again rejected all our evidence against the structure of Cutino and our challenges against FECI prosecutors who covered this structure and were still in the process of accusing me. They refused to listen to all our witnesses, as director of RENAP –  Rudi Gallardo , the prosecutor Heidi Tamara de Leon , the lawyer Edgar  Búcaro.

FECI and CICIG asked for my sentence of 14 immutable years . This time they condemned me to 5 inconclusive years because of the fact that the cedula issued by the Mayor of Villa Canales – Miguel Garcia – had the same number as the ID of another person, as I have usurped this number. They did not explain why they blamed me for this card, knowing that I did not issue this card but mayor who was never investigated the same as the other officials. It is evident that with this absurd condemnation they want to justify 3.5 years of preventive detention that I fulfilled.

Absolute absurdity is what my daughter and my wife still continue with the previous sentence of 14 years each, immutable.

The only advance of this process was what the court ordered to initiate an investigation against all the people involved in the processing of our documents.

Imagine that blatant injustice is all this – they confirmed that the structure was never investigated and at the same time they condemned me – the victim of this structure, who I have denounced.

We can conclude that in the process against our family we face: on the one hand – against the Russian criminal state   ; on the other hand – against powerful criminal structure of people traffickers and document processors where Mayra Veliz is a key member and which protects the same CICIG and FECIand the judges and magistrates co-opted by this structure. Among the judges that covered this structure we can identify: Erica Aifan, Yasmin Barrios, Patricia Isabel Bustamante Garcia, Gervi Hionardo Sical Guerra.

Do we have a chance to win this war? We do not know, but it is important to fight hard for the truth, dignity and for freedom, because the enemy is cruel and has no mercy.

We trust in God with all our hearts and we recognize him in all our ways since he will lead us on the right path!