Chechnya: two acquaintances told a curse lay on their savings, which had to be handed over for the rite

Proceedings

1. 2019-12-10 · conviction and sentence at first instance

   Gudermes City Court, Chechen Republic, Russia (Гудермесский городской суд Чеченской Республики). The defendant, anonymised in the published judgment as ФИО4 and elsewhere as ФИО6 З., was convicted on two counts of fraud causing significant damage to a citizen under ч.2 ст.159 of the Criminal Code. In each case the court found she learned in conversation at a grocery shop how much an acquaintance had saved, told her falsely that a curse lay on that money, and offered to remove it by special rites while knowing she possessed no such ability. The first victim, having invited her home for the purpose, handed over 50,000 roubles for the duration of the rite and to be returned by a stated date; the defendant left with it and, by the end of November 2017, had spent it on repaying debts to trading representatives and on personal needs. The second victim was approached in the same way in respect of 127,000 roubles. She received one year six months on each count, aggregated by partial addition under ч.2 ст.69 to two years' deprivation of liberty, suspended under ст.73 with an eighteen-month probationary period and an obligation to register monthly.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• victims selected from conversation in a grocery shop after each mentioned the sum she had saved
• the curse located on the money itself, so that the savings became the object requiring treatment rather than the price of it
• the rite staged in the victim's own home, at her invitation, which the court records she extended in order that the curse be lifted
• the money taken «на время проведения ритуала» — for the duration of the rite, with a stated date for its return