Deputy Minister of Ecology of Karelia Alexei Shchepin can halve the fine for illegally cut down forest in Buryatia. The black lumberjack pleads not guilty, and the legal proceedings continue.
Recall that in 2010 Alexey Shchepin rented out a plot in the Babushkinsky forestry of Buryatia. The Sigma TEK company cut down the entire forest at the site and began mining sand and gravel. All this worsened the hydrological regime of the site, led to soil erosion and the destruction of animal habitats. After a general oversight inspection by the prosecutor’s office, a criminal case was initiated.
In total, the current Deputy Minister of Ecology of Karelia allowed cutting down more than 20 hectares of forest – 1.5 thousand cubic meters of wood. Babr spoke about this in a previous article:
As a result, Aleksey Shchepin was sentenced to four years in prison and banned from holding civil service positions for two years. But later, when the punishment was already outdated, the prosecutor’s office demanded 52 million rubles from him. On February 8, the second preliminary hearing on the case was held, but the last requirement was not met.
The court of Ulan-Ude did not consider financial claims against Aleksey Shchepin as part of a criminal case. The claim of the prosecutor’s office of Buryatia is to be considered in the Petrozavodsk city court.
It turned out that according to the latest claims, the amount of the fine could be reduced to 28.8 million rubles. At the moment, additional information on the case also remains undisclosed, for example, about Shchepin’s accomplices from the administration of the Kabansky district of Buryatia.
By the way, Shchepin does not admit his guilt at all and even tries to cancel the guilty verdict. For this reason, he asked to postpone the consideration of the claim. The next meeting is scheduled for mid-March.
One gets the feeling that the legal proceedings in the case of Alexei Shchepin have turned into a real auction, where the price of illegally cut wood is decided. Moreover, the lower the amount offered, the greater the likelihood that the culprit will answer for what he did. I wonder if the person responsible for the Karelian forests will be able to wash his hands after a large-scale deforestation in Buryatia?
