| The “victim” of Governor Butov admitted to the slander The Petrograd District Court of St. Petersburg yesterday began hearings in the case of the Governor of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Vladimir Butov. On the very first day of the trial, it became clear that the head of the district would most likely not be convicted. The policeman, whom investigators accuse Mr. Butov of beating, yesterday retracted his testimony, saying that he slandered the governor in order to avoid punishment.
In June 2003, the St. Petersburg prosecutor's office brought charges under Article 318-2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (use of violence against a representative of the authorities) against Butov himself, the head of the district representative office in St. Petersburg, Yuri Ermolaev, and the Smolny driver Vladimir Chigirinov. The case was initiated on the basis of a report from St. Petersburg traffic police sergeant Alexei Popov. He stated that on April 11, 2003, he stopped Vladimir Butov’s car on one of the St. Petersburg streets. According to Popov’s version, expressed during the preliminary investigation, the head of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug tried to break into the zone of the presidential motorcade - on that day, Vladimir Putin held a meeting in St. Petersburg with the participation of the governors of the North-Western District. The policeman refused to let Butov into the closed area, and for this, as the sergeant previously claimed, the governor hit him in the face. The head of the district himself and his assistants categorically denied the fact of violence against the traffic police officer.
But yesterday Popov told the court a completely different version of the incident, saying that Butov and his companions were not guilty of assault. The sergeant admitted that he did stop the governor's car, which, according to him, violated the rules. But there were no beatings or even threats from the Nenets guests. Immediately after this, the policeman realized that “attacking” a high-ranking official would threaten him with the loss of his job - his superiors had clearly hinted at this. And so the guard decided to play it safe and wrote a report about the beating. And since the district law enforcement agencies do not like Butov (in 2002, a subsequently closed criminal case was opened against him for theft of budget funds), the report was immediately put into action. However, the prosecutor’s office is not going to drop the charges against Butov even now. Moreover, for her, the change in the policeman’s version is not news - as it turned out, he had already refused charges during the preliminary investigation. Victor MATVEEV, St. Petersburg |
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