The President is offered to protect environmentalists – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

More than 60 environmental organizations and associations have asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to take personal control over the case of convicted employees of one of the country’s oldest nature reserves, Kronotsky (Kamchatka). In July, employees were sentenced to imprisonment for terms of three to five years on charges of embezzling more than 450 million rubles allocated to clean up the protected area from Soviet man-made garbage. Ecologists are perplexed why the investigation is sure that the money was stolen and not used, while video materials, testimonies and conclusions of scientific institutions indicate the opposite. They ask the President to conduct an independent examination to establish the real amount of work performed.

Environmental organizations and associations sent an open letter (Kommersant has it) to Russian President Vladimir Putin. They ask to take the cases of employees of the Kronotsky Reserve under personal control and instruct the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation to re-examine them. In total, more than 60 people signed the letter.

As previously reported by “Kommersant”, On July 15, the city court of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky sentenced employees of one of the oldest reserves in the Russian Federation – Kronotsky – to imprisonment for terms of three to five years. The criminal case was opened in 2017. The investigation accused the employees of embezzling almost 455 million rubles allocated for the cleanup of natural areas from Soviet garbage.

Earlier, in 2015, the state budget, within the framework of the federal target program, allocated money for the elimination of environmental damage. The tender was won by Ecology; a year later, the management of the reserve reported that more than 1 thousand tons of garbage and barrels with fuel residues, as well as soil contaminated with oil products, had been removed from the territory. But in 2018, the director of Ecology, Vitaly Drozd, was detained on suspicion of extortion and fraud, and this situation had nothing to do with the Kronotsky Reserve. Having made a deal with the investigation, the businessman stated that he allegedly participated in the theft of budget money intended for cleaning up the Kronotsky nature reserve.

The investigation concluded that Ecology won the tender illegally, and the cost of waste removal was overstated several times. Moreover, according to the investigation, a significant part of the garbage was buried on the territory of the reserve. The deputy director of the reserve, Alexander Ilyin, also made a deal and testified against his colleagues. Vitaly Drozd and Alexander Ilyin pleaded guilty to embezzlement and were convicted in a special order under Part 4 of Art. 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, having received suspended sentences. Other defendants in the criminal case denied guilt.

Nevertheless, in July, the city court of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky sentenced Roman Korchigin, deputy director of the reserve for science and tourism, to five years in a penal colony, Daria Panicheva, head of the scientific department, to four years and six months, and Oksana Terekhova, deputy director for finance and economics, to five years. half years, the former deputy director for general issues Nikolai Pozdnyakov – by three years. Ruslan Oshurov, an entrepreneur and one of the leaders of the Ecology company, received eight years in prison – the court called him one of the main organizers of criminal plans. In addition, according to the claims of the prosecutor’s office for 454.6 million rubles. and the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation in the amount of 16.8 million rubles. convicts must return the funds in full.

Defenders of employees and the Ministry of Natural Resources appealed the decision, but the date for the consideration of complaints has not been determined. The trial itself caused a wide public outcry. The director of the Kronotsky Reserve, Pyotr Shpilenok, announced his resignation, and the convicts were supported by the governor of Kamchatka, Vladimir Solodov.

According to independent experts and the public, the investigation and the court did not take into account important aspects relevant to the case, the environmentalists’ letter says.

The authors of the letter are perplexed why the investigation is sure that the money was stolen and not used, while the video materials, testimonies and conclusions of scientific institutions “confirm the work to eliminate the accumulated damage.” “All these documents were attached to the materials of the criminal case, but the investigating authorities actually ignored them, including ignoring the important, documented fact of waste removal from the reserve,” the letter says. At the same time, environmentalists remind, the defenders asked for a comprehensive forensic accounting and construction and technical expertise, but the court refused them.

As part of the investigation and court proceedings, there was not a single examination or other actions that would allow to objectively establish whether the cleanup of the territory of the reserve had really been carried out, complains Sergey Tsyplenkov, executive director of the Russian branch of Greenpeace.

“The investigation insists that the waste was not taken out, but buried in a protected area,” he notes. places of work. The places where the waste was allegedly buried have not been established.” In his opinion, this case “has already caused serious harm to the entire reserve system, since it gave a signal to all employees of the specially protected natural area that participation in such projects can lead to prison”: “Since a criminal case has been opened against the employees of the Kronotsky Reserve, such undeniably useful projects were no longer implemented.

Anna Vasilyeva