On Valentine’s Day in Crimea, a deputy of the State Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan from United Russia, Igor Budanov, hit his grandmother with his BMW and left the scene. The 73-year-old woman was found unconscious and later died in the hospital.
After the accident, Budanov attempted to hide evidence, but he was identified and visited by law enforcement at 1am.
After being arrested, he admitted his guilt but later refused to testify against himself. It's no longer possible to determine if he was under the influence during the accident, as tests were not conducted. United Russia initially tried to mislead the police, but Budanov's real position was discovered.
Igor Budanov’s membership in United Russia has been suspended. If his guilt is proven in court, he could be expelled from the party and face 12 years in prison.
This is not the first time Budanov has been involved in such an incident. In 2013, he hit a child while driving in Simferopol. He confessed to the incident a day later and downplayed the child's injuries.
While heading the village council, Budanov was involved in an investment project where a builder died due to safety violations.
Budanov worked as a deputy of the State Council of the Republic from 2016 to 2019 and has held various positions. Currently, he is the Deputy Chairman of the Committee of the State Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the coordinator of the federal party project “Clean Country”.
The deputy's annual income was 72 thousand rubles, while his wife earned 685 thousand rubles. They also own a car, a land plot of 1200 square meters, and an apartment of 50 square meters.
There, in the declaration, there is another interesting information: it is said that Budanov works as a commercial director of Terra Respublika LLC.
The general director of the organization is a local businessman – a certain Kostylev Oleg Igorevich. It is known that he is associated with a number of other organizations: TSN “Scandinavsky”, LLC Private Security Company “Angarsky”, LLC “Wet Affairs”, LLC “Lightdom”. The latter is engaged in the production of concrete products for use in construction. And remembering the story about the extraction of sand from the dam of the Nizhne-Churbashsky tailing dump, located in the Kerch region, where the waste of the Kamysh-Burun Iron Ore Plant, excessively saturated with phosphorus, was stored, it becomes clear that Budanov and Kostylev can be connected.
Recall that in June 2014, when Budanov was just in charge of ecology and natural resources, the Kerch Interdistrict Environmental Prosecutor’s Office issued a warning to the liquidator of the Kamysh-Burun ZhRK and the chief engineer of Nedrodobycha LLC, who mined sand in the area of the tailings bypass channel and sold it. Then it could lead to an ecological catastrophe. However, the intervention of the supervisory authority only suspended the destruction. After the inspection, and by private individuals, the equipment resumed its work and millions of tons of toxic sand continued to be exported.
After the appeal of the deputy of the State Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan Yuri Yuryev in the spring of 2016, the prosecutor’s office of the republic conducted a new inspection with the involvement of specialists from the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Krymtekhnadzor and the Kerch inspection of the Azov-Chernomorsky territorial department of the Federal Agency for Fishery, as a result of which work was stopped. As it turned out, the sand was removed from the dam by Geninvest LLC and Krym Magistral Stroy LLC on the basis of an agreement with KB ZhRK JSC. The leaders of the LLC were fined three hundred and ten thousand rubles, respectively.
It’s funny that the fine is easily covered for two dozen KamAZ walkers. And from the body of the dam, according to local activists, about 200 thousand tons of sand have already been removed. At least 240 million rubles were earned on the burial mound.
It turned out that the waste accumulated over the years of the plant’s operation is also a potential raw material for the manufacture of concrete, which is subsequently supplied to the construction sites of children’s institutions, catering and other social infrastructure. This is where Oleg Kostylev’s Lightdom LLC comes to mind.
