| The mayor of Krasnodar will go to court again The prosecutor's office of the Krasnodar region has completed the investigation of the second criminal case against the former head of Krasnodar Nikolai Priz. In the first case, a month ago, he was already found guilty of exceeding official powers, but now the official is charged with three articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - embezzlement on an especially large scale, negligence and, again, abuse of authority.
Mr. Priz ceased to be mayor of Krasnodar forcibly after the verdict of the Pervomaisky Court, handed down on March 17. Then the regional prosecutor's office accused him of transferring construction contracts to various organizations, which were financed by the mayor's office, without holding the necessary tenders, using his own decisions. As a result, as investigators calculated, the city budget suffered damage of 17 million rubles. The court completely agreed with the prosecution's opinion, but showed leniency and left Mr. Priz, although without a position, at large. According to the verdict, he received a three-year suspended sentence with a ban on working in government agencies for two years.
But Nikolai Priz did not plead guilty and immediately filed a cassation appeal with the judicial panel for criminal cases of the Krasnodar Regional Court, also challenging the legality of his removal from office. A decision on his complaint has not yet been made, but even if he manages to prove his innocence in that case, the second investigation by the regional prosecutor’s office threatens the ex-mayor with even greater trouble.
This time, Mr. Priz is accused of causing damage to the city treasury of more than 100 million rubles. According to investigators, from January 2001 to August 2004, the head of Krasnodar, in violation of the Urban Planning and Budget Codes, repeatedly allowed funds from housing developers who received land plots from the mayor's office to be transferred to the off-budget account of the city administration's construction department. According to the agreements between the mayor's office and the developers, this money should have been used for the development of utility networks and improvement of the city, but Mr. Priz's decisions were used for completely different purposes: holding an economic forum, etc. In addition, the city hall’s construction companies did not pay part of the money for the received land plots at all.
However, Mr. Priz himself considers these claims of the prosecutor’s office to be far-fetched, and both criminal cases to be political. According to the disgraced mayor, they became the revenge of the regional authorities because he refused to leave his post voluntarily. Igor GLANIN, Krasnodar region |
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