Colleagues of Petr Shpilenok, director of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Kronotsky State Reserve”, contacted the editorial office of Rucriminal.info and handed over his application.
“I applied for resignation from the post of director of the Kronotsky State Nature Reserve. It is with pain in my heart that I write about this. I truly love my job, but right now my team is being destroyed. A team of people who made the Kronotsky Nature Reserve one of the best in the country and the world. These are real professionals in their field, equal to a few in the reserved system. My duty is to do my best. People became hostages of the soulless formalism of the system as part of the investigation of the criminal case on the cleanup of the Kronotsky Reserve in 2015-16.
All the accusations against my team are based on the testimony of witnesses who were convicted in a special order and received suspended sentences for this. Template scheme: intimidate, get evidence and build the whole case based on them. God alone knows what ultimatums were given to them, in their testimony they blamed the former director of the Kronotsky Reserve, Tikhon Shpilenok, who had already died by that time, for everything. The investigation did not come up with anything better than to bring the guilty to his deputies and researchers who worked on the project to clean up the reserve, performing their official duty.
On Monday, the prosecutor's office asked for real terms: for my deputy for science and tourism Roman Korchigin Roman Anatolevich - 6 years in prison, for the head of the scientific department Darya Panicheva Darya Panicheva - 7 years, for the deputy for finance and economy Oksana Terekhova Oksana Terekhova - 8 years, for the former deputy for general affairs, Nikolai Pozdnyakov, 4.5 years. Analyzing the attitude of the judge to the case, I understand that these people will be arrested in the courtroom in the coming days. They all have families and children. These are ruined destinies. However, there is no evidence for them. What actually happened on the territory was not investigated in any way. Not a single confrontation, not a single expert assessment of documents, not a single cost examination of the work performed, assessment of the contractor's expenses, assessment of the state of natural complexes at the work sites have been carried out, the places of supposedly existing burrows have not been established, but it was possible to at least conduct a banal polygraph - all is based on the testimony obtained as part of a deal with the investigation.
In court against employees, in his testimony, the main witness for the prosecution, contractor Vitaliy Drozd, said: “I don’t understand at all what the reserve’s employees are doing here”, “The reserve’s management and the reserve’s employees, they pursued good goals in cleaning up the reserve.”
The second main witness for the prosecution, Alexander Ilyin, said: "The work was actually carried out and a large amount was done in the reserve", "It was a scale: with the involvement of equipment, with the involvement of ships, transport." To the questions "Any cases are known that any of the employees of the Kronotsky Reserve in 2015 or 2016 received any illegal rewards for carrying out criminal or illegal, in your opinion, activities related to the elimination of accumulated environmental damage ?", Ilyin replied "No, it is not known."
But the court does not take this into account, the basis is still their testimony, written under pressure during a deal with the investigation. And even in them there is nothing about the criminal role of our employees, this is only mentioned in the certificates of operational employees and the conclusions of the investigator.
One of the key witnesses, Koval, stated at the trial that some of the signatures in the protocol were not his, but this was proved by an examination ...
Such terms for murders are not always given, but here, in fact, for the performance of their official duties. Since the employees worked smoothly and clearly followed the orders of the director, they certainly represented an organized criminal group. In this case, an organized crime group can be called any workable team! Tikhon, as a director, was really responsible for everything that happened in the institution. I don't know what mistakes he made, now only God can judge him. But I am sure that the employees became hostages of his death, the desire to curry favor and the soulless formalism of the system.
Judging by the attitude of the judge and the logic of the development of events (representatives of the Ministry of Natural Resources are not allowed into the process, although they were determined by the decision of the investigator by the injured party; photo and video recording of the process is not allowed; all petitions are rejected; the possibility of a full interrogation of witnesses is limited) they are simply trying to quietly condemn the employees .
I do not know what else I can do as a director in order to achieve an objective investigation of the case against my employees, how to draw attention to this inhuman formalism that breaks people's lives.
Therefore, I turn to you all for help, most likely the last one in the position of director of the Kronotsky Reserve.
P.S. I came to work as the director of the Kronotsky Nature Reserve in order to continue the work of my brother, my family, in which I believe and which I love with all my soul. And no one will ever convince me that Tikhon could give the command to bury garbage in the territory of the Reserve, he would never have crossed out everything that he had done before. We will fight for colleagues and justice to the end, but I consider it senseless and even vile to drag out the work of the most difficult Institution without my guys, to hire new employees in their places, as if nothing had happened.
To understand the issue, Rucriminal.info talks about the "case of scientists."
In Kamchatka, the trial of the employees of the Kronotsky Reserve is coming to an end. The prosecution demanded to recover hundreds of millions of rubles from employees of one of the country's leading environmental institutions and deprive them of their liberty for terms of 6 to 8 years. They are charged with embezzlement of funds allocated from the state budget for the elimination of accumulated environmental damage on the Pacific coast of the reserve. The employees were just doing their jobs.
As part of the debate of the parties at the trial in the "clean-up case" in the Kronotsky Reserve, despite the abundance of evidence of the work being done, the public prosecutor said: the guilt of the defendants was proven in full, and punishment is possible only by real imprisonment.
The following are accused of embezzlement: Deputy Director for Science and Educational Tourism Roman Korchigin, Head of the Scientific Department Daria Panicheva, Deputy Director for Financial and Legal Support Oksana Terekhova. In addition, the former director of the reserve Tikhon Shpilenok is accused posthumously. The prosecution demands to recover from them damages totaling over 460 million rubles in solidarity, to award multimillion-dollar fines, and to send the defendants to prison for terms of 6 to 8 years.
The work was carried out within the framework of the federal targeted program, it was a pilot project for Russia to eliminate the accumulated environmental damage in protected areas. The prosecution insists that the cleanup was not carried out, and the defendants embezzled funds allocated by the state. The investigation is based on the hypothesis that hundreds of tons of metal barrels, empty and with the remains of fuel and lubricants, old equipment and fragments of buildings were not taken out of the protected area, but buried on the shore. At the same time, in the course of the investigation, not a single confrontation, not a single expert assessment of documents, not a single cost examination of the work performed, assessment of the contractor's expenses, assessment of the state of natural complexes at the work sites were carried out, the places of allegedly available diggings were not established.
The basis of the criminal case against the employees of the reserve was the testimony of the contractor who performed the clean-up work, who, as part of a deal with the investigation, in order to receive a milder punishment for his previous crimes and be released, slandered Tikhon Shpilenok, accused him of creating an organized crime group, taking advantage of the fact that that the director of the reserve died of a serious illness in 2016 and could no longer refute his testimony.
“Since the investigation could not interrogate the deceased director, his subordinates were unreasonably brought to justice, who were simply doing their duty. There is no objective evidence of my colleagues' guilt. Throughout the investigation, it was obvious that the investigation was not interested in a real search for evidence, conducting examinations and establishing the truth. But the accuser's side claims that since the employees worked smoothly and clearly followed the director's orders, they certainly represented an organized criminal group. In this case, an organized crime group can be called any workable team! - states Pyotr Shpilenok, director of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "Kronotsky State Reserve". – From the very beginning we defended the good name of our colleagues and will do it to the last. Perhaps it is for our active struggle for justice, in order to teach us a lesson, that the accuser announced such a cruel punishment.
To prove that the conclusions of the investigation are incorrect, the Kronotsky Reserve team collected hundreds of documents, photo and video materials, evidence, including the conclusions of scientific institutions, Rosprirodnadzor and the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia. Reports with footage of cleaning and waste disposal in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky were broadcast on Kamchatka and federal TV channels and are still in the public domain.
“On the coast of the Kronotsky Peninsula in the areas of Olga Bay, the mouth of the Bolshaya Chazhma River, Cape Kozlov and the Cape Kronotsky lighthouse, in 2016, work was carried out to eliminate the previously accumulated damage and technical land reclamation. Over the past years, a good natural overgrowth of the territory has been noted. The restoration of plant communities and the passage of succession stages proceed in accordance with their natural features. The developed program of measures to eliminate objects of previously accumulated damage and technical reclamation is effective and can be recommended for implementation in other specially protected natural areas of the Russian Federation,” said Mikhail Kozhin. Mikhail, being a researcher at the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University, led the geobotanical team, which conducted monitoring of the natural restoration of natural complexes after cleaning in the Kronotsky Reserve.
Yaroslav Mukhtarov
To be continued
Source: www.rucriminal.info
