Former schema-hegumen Sergiy told about bribes of millions of dollars for the refusing of the Tax payer ID

"To avoid the requisites at the monasteries, I had to pay several million dollars so as not to violate the blessings of my spiritual father, an Elder Kirill", - the Interfax news agency quoted the telegram channel of the defenders of schema-abbot Sergiy.

He explained his actions with a quote from the late elder Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov): "Today it is the INN, tomorrow - the card, the day after tomorrow - the seal of the Antichrist. It's everyone's business, the will of everyone: whether or not to take the INN. I personally will not take it".

Also, according to Sergiy, the abbess of the monastery, hegumeness Varvara (Krygina), who had previously said that she would not take the TIN for the monastery, has already received it at the moment.

“Judging by the astronomical sums Nikolay Romanov names when he talks about the money he was in charge of, his refusal to register the monastery as a separate legal entity with bank accounts, conducting non-cash payments, keeping official accounting, filing reports on the use of earmarked receipts, does not look so unambiguously pure, spiritual and heroic act"- said the secretary of the diocesan council, Hegumen Veniamin (Rainikov).

Sergiy has been the confessor of the Sredneuralsk women's monastery in honor of the icon of the Most Holy Mother of God "The Conqueror of Breads" since its foundation in 2002. In the spring of last 2020, he had a conflict with the Yekaterinburg diocese on the basis of attitudes towards the coronavirus and the restrictions imposed, including the ban on visiting churches. For several months he actually controlled the monastery, being banned from ministry and then excommunicated from the church.

On the night of December 29, Sergiy was detained and transported to Moscow, where he was arrested. He was charged under articles of inclination to suicide, arbitrariness and violation of the right to freedom of conscience and religion.