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In June 1999, as Vladimir Putin prepared for the role of first deputy prime minister, a criminal case was opened looking into his past. Lt. Col. Andrei Zykov, a former senior investigator for Especially Important Cases of the Criminal Investigation Department for Corruption and Economic Activities of the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs North-West Federal District (St. Petersburg), was put in charge of criminal case number 144128. Zykov was given the task of investigating a construction company, Twentieth Trust. Officials suspected the company had been used to siphon money from St Petersburg's city budget in the early 1990s, when Putin worked in the city office. The company continued to receive government funding despite being in debt.

In 2000, Russia's prosecutor general shut the investigation down on the grounds of "insufficient proof." Zykov was fired a year and half later. Below is the videotaped oral testimony of Zykov regarding this investigation. Zykov uploaded these oral testimonies after the social unrest caused by the fraudulent 2011 Duma elections.

The following videos have been taken from external websites. They've been downloaded and saved on our site as some of them have started to disappear from the internet.

The full transcript of videos 1-9 in PDF and Word format is available upon request.

Zykov Part 1-Why he was dismissed

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Zykov Part 2-About His Dismissal