In Kamchatka, the sentence against the employees of the Kronotsk Nature Reserve was overturned

In Kamchatka, the verdict was overturned in the case of employees of the “Kronotsk State Nature Reserve”, who were accused of embezzling 455 million rubles. The convicts were released from prison, the deputy director of the institution Piotr Shpilenok reported in “VKontakte”. Previously, employees of the reserve were sentenced to imprisonment for a term of three and a half to five years.

“This is the first step on the way to justice,” Shpylenok noted. He added that it was unfair to so harshly punish people who performed their official duties and became hostages of instructions that coincided in time with the investigation into the death of the director of the reserve.

The sentence was overturned for all four defendants, all of whom were released from custody in the courtroom on recognizance. The case was returned to the court of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky for re-examination in a different composition,” said the representative of the Kamchatka regional court.

• In July 2022, the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky City Court found four employees of the Kronotsk Nature Reserve – Oksana Terekhova, Daria Panycheva, Roman Korchygin and Nikolai Pozdniakov guilty of multimillion-dollar embezzlement and sentenced them to imprisonment for 3 to 5.5 years in a general regime colony. Businessman Ruslan Oshurov, accused in the same case, received 8 years in prison.
• According to the court, the defendants acted as part of an organized group under the leadership of the former director of the “Kronotsk State Reserve” Tikhon Shpilenko (died in 2016). In 2015 and 2016, through a controlled commercial organization, they embezzled more than 454 million rubles allocated for the elimination of environmental damage on the territory of the reserve.
• The defendants were taken into custody in the courtroom. It was also decided to collect 454 million rubles from them at the request of the prosecutor and 17 million rubles at the request of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia.
• The defense of the employees of “Kronotsky Reserve” appealed the verdict. During the consideration of the criminal case, the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky City Court did not find any reliable and admissible evidence confirming guilt, said lawyer Alexander Andreev.