The interesting story of Aleksey Torubarov, who’s been waiting for his political asylum in Hungary for two years

According to index.hu, the owner of the Russian restaurant chain that was doing well a few years ago has been waiting for two and a half years to get a political asylum in Hungary. Despite the fact that he’s been attested in two EU countries, EU laws threw him to a place he’s not connected to. His story doesn’t only demonstrate the everyday defenselessness of an entrepreneur in the illiberal Russia, but also gives an insight into the hopeless labyrinths of the European and Hungarian bureaucracy, which is quite worrying.

When the Soviet Union fell apart and opportunities opened up, the pedagogue started an enterprise in Volgograd. He first traded, then opened restaurants and lined his pockets. In 2006, the mafia coalesced with politics, the federal secret service and the police started blackmailing him. He paid one million dollars but he was ripped off and they started a criminal procedure against him. So he escaped to Prague, but the Russian secret service snatched him. Due to the warrant of caption, he served time in Czechia and Austria for one and a half years. Finally, Prague delivered him up to Moscow.

In 2013, he escaped to Hungary from Ukraine through the green border. But will the Hungary getting closer and closer to Putin’s Russia give him the asylum? “I’ll do something with myself but I’m not going back there!” said the desperate sentence Aleksey Torubarov in a countryside restaurant, where he met with Index’s reporter.  This wasn’t the first, neither the last time he said this sentence. He had plenty of time in the past six years to think through his life in Austrian, Czech, Russian prisons, while creeping on the Ukrainian border or while waiting in Hungary. At least he is free here, if we can call seeing your family occasionally freedom, because he can’t leave the country. Though Hungary was never his aim, he was only driven here by his misfortune and bureaucracy.

The 58-year-old Aleksey Torubarov is the classic example of enrichment in the perestroika, if we don’t count people who obtained oil wells, who had a good relationship with the all-time power or started the accumulation of capital in organized crime and then either died or became powerful.

“The taste of freedom felt so good; you could earn money at once. I was enthusiastic, founded a company and started trading with the Chinese.” In Russian conditions it wasn’t surprising that Torubarov delivered a 40 ton BelAZ truck with huge wheels there and got two carriages of clothes in change. “I sold the clothes and became a rich man in one day.”

This is how he founded Bar Texas in 1998 in Volgograd. Torubarov renovated a neglected building, which he rented. Then he opened more and more in the following years and the real bustling started after 2000. There came Bar Bocka, Japona Papa and the other places.

“Russians only go to restaurants at the occasion of celebrations, holidays. Regular guests are only officials and chief policemen. They sometimes asked me smaller favours, like regaling a delegation, but that was all. I’ve never paid a slush-fund. If a policeman tried to bribe me, I bowed him out. At the time I ran ten restaurants from Latin American to Indian. The city seemed to be my friend.” Torubarov didn’t know that the reason why he wasn’t bothered was a misunderstanding.

He only realized the misunderstanding, when there was a procedure against the city mayor in 2006. Evgeniy Ischenko was passed a sentence upon despite his powerful relatives, and his case tampered with the balance of power, thus also the illegal income of business interests. Everybody was scanned in the name of re-channeling, not in the name of the fight against corruption.

“Until then, everybody thought that I was protected by someone, so no one bothered me. But then they found out in 2007 that I wasn’t paying for anyone.” The autonomy started selling its real estates in 2007. One of his restaurants’ contacts expired then, and he found out that the place was going to be rouped as a simple cellar. He knew that he could win but heard a dope that someone would arrange that he would be the only entrant at the auction if he paid 3-5 million rubles (24-40 million forints in 2008). Torubarov rejected this offer. Then the vice-mayor looked him up with the news that the Federal Security Service (FSS) would bore down on the blackmailers, but they would need his cooperation. The promise was that he could buy the rental in change.

“Then an official from the Federal Security Service messaged that I should give them 1 million dollars so they would buy the place and later rewrite it on my name.” So Torubarov took on credit, collected the money and gave it to the official. And then happened what every sensible person thinks that happened: the official disappeared with the money. After this, Torubarov started investigating and looking for evidence himself.