Sentence to employees of the Kronotsky Reserve canceled

As Roszapovedtsentr reported on its website, on February 7, a court of second instance ruled on the so-called “case on the cleanup of the Kronotsky Reserve.”

“The panel of judges of the Kamchatka Regional Court took into account the arguments given by the defense and the accused during the debate. According to the decision of the Court of Appeal, the case will be sent for retrial in the court of first instance. Four environmentalists, who spent more than six months in a pre-trial detention center pending an appeal, have been released,” the report says.

As the department notes, in this way, “in relation to the current employees of the reserve Oksana Terekhova, Daria Panicheva, Roman Korchigin and their former colleague Nikolai Pozdnyakov, the decision of the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky court, which sentenced them to real terms on July 15, 2022, was canceled.”
They were accused of embezzling more than 450 million rubles and failing to clean up the protected area from garbage.

“Investigation and legal proceedings in the case of the elimination of accumulated environmental damage in the Kronotsky Reserve on the Pacific coast in 2015-2016. lasted more than three years and caused a public outcry on an all-Russian scale, ”  the Roszapovedcenter says.

The Court of Second Instance took into account a multitude of arguments put forward by the defendants and their defense. An important role, as noted, was also played by the on-site examination carried out on the initiative of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia, which was carried out by scientists from Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov.

“Research by experts, conducted in the fall of 2022 using high-tech methods without interfering with the natural environment, showed that there were no buried wastes on the territory, and work to eliminate the accumulated environmental damage was carried out,” the report says.

After reviewing the new evidence, the representative for the prosecution announced a change in position in this case. “The prosecutor's office asked for suspended sentences for environmentalists. However, the Court of Appeal issued a different decision: “The verdict of the Kamchatka City Court against the convicts is canceled, the criminal case is transferred for a new trial to the court of first instance in a different composition of the court. Release the convicts from custody."
 
Conservationists' lawyers said they were beginning preparations for a retrial.

The representative of the defense, Irina Dyachenko, expressed the opinion that on February 7, the panel of judges issued a reasoned decision.

“I am convinced (and this was evident from the process) that the collegium understood the case, studied all the materials. A very important step has been taken on the path to justice. A huge thank you to everyone who supported us all this time in this difficult situation. Including the press, citizens, public organizations,” she said in the message.

As stated in the message on the website of Roszapovedtsentr, all the details of the resonant "case of cleaning up the Kronotsky Reserve" are set out on a specially created website kronokiochistka.wildnet.ru.