Imagine a man who is a first-class professional in his field — so first-class that he is forgiven a great deal, almost everything. He is not always able to show up for work, but every time he does, he gets so much done, and done so well, that his employer good-naturedly turns a blind eye to his employee's weakness. And that weakness is alcoholism. Regularly, after receiving his generous salary, Gavriil buys high-end electronics and a lot of vodka. He drinks and listens to his favorite music. When it runs out — no, not the music, the vodka — Gavriil looks for a buyer for his super gear at half price. After all, the money has run out too. And a few days later his employer comes to pick him up again. One can assume that the company Gavriil works for keeps a calendar of his binges. Or rather, it used to. Some time ago Gavriil decided to pull himself together and trade the music for a passionate wife.
A Reliable Client
Our firm has known Gavriil for many years. You could say he is one of our regular clients. He is no criminal: he doesn't cheat anyone, doesn't rape anyone and doesn't deal drugs. He is a romantic who attracts comical situations that somehow always involve the police. Perhaps one day someone will write his life story. Because although Gavriil is an electrician, his life is in many ways like a rock star's, only funnier. Only one episode of his biography is told here, but it is the very latest chapter.
Gavriil works as an electrician for a large German company with contracts all over the world. Wherever big industrial construction sites spring up, you are quite likely to run into Gavriil. In 2014, when this new "Juno and Avos" began (the famous Russian rock opera about Count Rezanov's love for the Californian Conchita), our regular client was to be found in South America. Brazil urgently needed a super-electrician, and there he was. Brazil, of course, lies considerably further south than California. Gavriil is no Ambassador Nikolai Rezanov. But this story had its own Conchita, too. Her name was Carlusia. If our client and Count Rezanov had anything in common — a shared ethnic origin, a certain snub nose in keeping with the image created by Nikolai Karachentsov — then Carlusia differed from Conchita not only in the simplicity of her background but also in a long history of romantic adventures, to which her four children bore witness.
For a rock star — sorry, for a Russian electrician with a German passport — this was no obstacle to joining his life with a hot-blooded Brazilian woman. Nor did it matter that Gavriil spoke no language other than Russian ("etwas auf Deutsch" — "a bit of German" — doesn't count). And the fact that Carlusia spoke only Argentine Spanish fluently… well, where's the problem? The magnetism between Russian and Latin American culture has long been known. If only there hadn't been an ocean between the continents… But Gavriil crossed it. Their love was short but stormy. Carlusia was probably also taken with Russians, and her enthusiasm was reinforced by the fact that this Russian "Levsha" — the legendary craftsman of Russian folklore — held a German passport. Gavriil and Carlusia got married, and straight from the construction site our client flew to Germany with his wife, her suitcases and her two youngest children. Happily ever after, as they say.
A Love Story
With his change in social status, Gavriil stopped buying top-of-the-range electronics. He had a large family to feed. The passionate Carlusia needed clothes. After the wedding and the move to Berlin, however, Carlusia's passion focused mainly on her new husband's salary and on shopping trips. Gavriil could not understand — nor did he try to — what was wrong with him and why his wife had grown cold toward him. There had been such a passionate love… He was sad, and he drank. For which the passionate Brazilian gave him rows and the occasional beating. The only creature in the house who felt sorry for him was Carlusia's fifteen-year-old daughter. A special emotional bond developed between the teenager and Gavriil, and it lasted longer than the passionate romance with Carlusia.
Two years later Carlusia left Gavriil and moved in with a new husband, Klaus. He was no Russian drunk but a genuine German, in whose heart a turbocharger likewise kicked in at the sight of the passionate Brazilian. The betrayal broke Gavriil's heart. He felt responsible for Carlusia's children and transferred money to her account every month. According to Gavriil, however, Klaus pocketed that money. The two men clearly disliked each other. And from time to time they exchanged short messages on WhatsApp. "You're an idiot!" Gavriil wrote. "I'll sue you!" Klaus replied. The correspondence was kept going largely by Carlusia's fifteen-year-old daughter, who told Gavriil what a skinflint they were living with now, how sorry she was that her mother had left him, and that she wanted to live with Gavriil rather than in Klaus's house. Gavriil suffered, drank, and went away on long business trips.
Children Are Sacred
On his beloved stepdaughter's birthday, Gavriil was laying cable somewhere in Mexico. But he came back from the long trip with a present for the girl. It was a Saturday, and his stepdaughter was coming over to stay the night. Whether out of joy or because he was still drowning the bitter pain of his grievance, Gavriil got drunk before she arrived. When the girl came, her stepfather was already drunk, good-natured and tearful. He handed over the present and laid the table. But Carlusia, on learning that her ex-husband was drunk, decided to collect her daughter that same day: children did not belong around drunk people. And she came together with Klaus. That's when it all began.
The men got into such a shouting match that the neighbors called the police. When the patrol arrived, the grim men in their stylish, immaculate black uniforms didn't know what to do — separate the brawlers into opposite corners or cover their mouths so as not to burst out laughing. Picture it for yourself: a drunk Russian whose only German is the foul-mouthed kind, a Brazilian woman who speaks no German at all, and a German trembling with fear. And they are all shouting. Having got their stomach muscles under control, the officers did eventually separate the quarreling parties. Gavriil went to the fridge and then to bed. Klaus, on the other hand, drove to the police station and filed a complaint against his wife's ex-husband, who had allegedly threatened him by saying: "Du tod." ("You dead.") In the complaint Klaus stated that he took the threat seriously and feared for his life.
Soon afterwards Gavriil received a Strafbefehl (a penal order issued without a trial) by post, ordering him to pay a fine (Geldstrafe) of two thousand eight hundred euros for threatening, § 241 StGB.
Gavriil could have paid the fine without much damage to his budget, but he did not accept it and came to our law firm. Our lawyer filed an Einspruch (objection) against the penal order, and the case went to a regular court trial.
Love Doesn't Only Make You Blind
In court, Klaus stuck to his version of the threat and told the court that he had been receiving such threats via WhatsApp from the very first moment he began living with Gavriil's ex-wife. When our lawyer asked why no copies of the threatening messages had been attached to the complaint, Klaus became flustered and didn't know what to say.
Our client, by contrast, insisted that he had never threatened anyone. During the row, he said, he had repeatedly called Klaus "Du Idiot" and other, less printable things. Gavriil did not deny insulting Klaus. However, this did not allow the charge to be changed, since the deadline for filing a Strafantrag (the injured party's formal request for prosecution) for insult had already expired, and Klaus had gone to the police only about the threats. As for the threats, our lawyer's submission to the court raised the question: "If there had been threats — even assuming there had been — why had they not been carried out several months later?" Obviously, if the threats had reflected serious intentions, there would also have been attempts to carry them out. Our client's account could have been confirmed or refuted either by the police officers or by Klaus's wife, Carlusia. Calling the latter as a witness was very risky, as the lawyer had expressly warned Gavriil. But he was determined to look the "bad people" in the eye. And here it turned out that Carlusia was by no means indifferent: relying on the rule that divorced spouses do not have to testify against each other, she refused to give evidence.
Our firm's lawyer proposed discontinuing the proceedings under § 153 StPO because of the minor nature of the offense, or summoning as witnesses the police officers who had attended the call-out. The public prosecutor's office did not agree. The lawyer then proposed discontinuing the proceedings under § 153a StPO, which involves paying a small sum of money as a condition (Geldauflage). After weighing up its chances of winning or losing the trial once the officers had been questioned, the prosecutor's office agreed to our proposal. And Gavriil was released from criminal liability. Whether he will also free himself from behavior better suited to a Brazilian telenovela is, unfortunately, no longer within the remit of our firm's lawyers.
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