The former head of the Irkutsk colony received another 10 years of imprisonment

In Angarsk, the court sentenced the former head of correctional colony No. 15, Andrey Vereshchak, to 10 years of strict regime and a fine of three million rubles in the case of abuse of power and large-scale bribery. This was reported by the press service of the Irkutsk office of the Investigative Committee of Russia.

According to the investigation, Vereshchak’s subordinate gave him a million rubles to avoid dismissal for “gross violation of labor discipline.” In addition, as the court found, the head of the colony illegally forced prisoners to work.

In March 2023, Vereshchak was sentenced to four years in prison on the second charge of abuse of authority. The head of the IK paid 700 thousand rubles for the inspection of a forest area that did not belong to the institution. The source “Taiga.info” noted that in Cheremkhov, Irkutsk region, forest felling was carried out in the interests of IK-15.

Earlier, human rights activists from Gulagu.Net found in the Buryat village of Kharat a ten-hectare estate where Vereshchak allegedly 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 officer. 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.