In Pryangarya, the former head of the rebelling colony was convicted

The court in Angarsk sentenced Andrey Vereshchak, the former head of correctional colony No. 15, to four years in a general-regime prison, where in 2020 FSIN officers harshly suppressed mass riots among prisoners. This is reported by the regional prosecutor’s office.

The court recognized Vereshchak as having exceeded his official powers. The former FSIN employee was also banned from holding certain positions for two years. According to the investigation, in January 2017, Vereshchak organized work on forest pathology inspection of the forest plot with budget funds, although the plot did not belong to the colony. The damage to the budget from his actions allegedly amounted to about 700 thousand rubles.

Another criminal case has been initiated against Vereshchak, the verdict on which has not yet been issued. The former head of the colony is accused of accepting a bribe of one million rubles from his subordinate in order not to fire him after a gross disciplinary violation. In addition, Vereshchak is accused of using prisoners as free labor.

Earlier, human rights activists from Gulagu.Net found in the Buryat village of Kharat a ten-hectare estate where Vereshchak supposedly lives. According to the project, he owns a collection of weapons worth six to seven million rubles, motor boats and all-terrain tanks. Human rights activists claim that all the buildings on the site – a cottage, a bathhouse, a garage, a pump house and even furniture, backgammon and chess – were made by the hands of convicts in the IK-15 industrial zone.

• A riot in the Angar colony occurred on April 10, 2020. It began with the beating of one of the prisoners by an FSIN employee. The convicted person opened his veins and published a video appeal. According to the victim, due to the appearance of the video, FSIN officers beat him again. After that, as a sign of protest, 17 people in the barracks self-inflicted wounds. According to the second version, voiced by human rights activists, the prisoners spoke out against the tightening of the regime when, due to the coronavirus pandemic, in the institutions of the FSIN of the Irkutsk region, any meetings with relatives and transfers were prohibited. According to the press service of the FSIN in the Irkutsk region, the convicts of the correctional colony No. 15 in Angarsk attacked an employee of the institution.
• Within a year after the riot, convicts were taken from the colony to other correctional facilities and pretrial detention centers, where they were interrogated to obtain a confession for organizing the riot. Based on the statements of prisoners, their relatives and lawyers, in 2021 several criminal cases were instituted in the Irkutsk region on the abuse of official powers by FSIN officers, on the torture and rape of prisoners. At the same time, criminal cases were also opened against nineteen participants in the riot.