confession

Yesterday, the prosecutor's office of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug (KhMAO) reported that the head of the district department of Rosprirodnadzor, Marat Sharifullin, was charged under articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Abuse of official powers" and "Forgery of office." He is accused of having previously headed the Territorial Information Fund for Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources for the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and paid for the organization’s uncompleted work on landscape design with budget money.

Marat Sharifullin headed the department of Rosprirodnadzor for the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug - Ugra in February 2005. Prior to this, since July 2003, he served as head of the Federal State Institution "Territorial Fund of Information on Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia for the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug". This structure generates information resources about the state of the environment, ensures the compatibility of information systems and databases, and carries out information exchange between federal government bodies, government bodies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, local governments, public organizations and citizens on environmental issues.

A criminal case against the head of Rosprirodnadzor for the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, 34-year-old Marat Sharifullin, was initiated on March 15 of this year. As Kommersant was told in the prosecutor's office of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Mr. Sharifullin himself came to the law enforcement agencies to confess. During interrogation, he said that, while heading the Federal State Institution "Territorial Information Fund", he entered into an agreement on his behalf with a certain citizen (his name was not disclosed in the interests of the investigation), who was supposed to carry out work on the landscape design of several territories. But he never completed the work. Meanwhile, 69 thousand rubles were transferred from the FGU account to the bank account of the contractors.

Based on the fact stated by Marat Sharifullin, the prosecutor's office opened a criminal case under Articles 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Abuse of Official Power") and 292 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Forgery of Officials"). “Now the case is at the stage of preliminary investigation. Mr. Sharifullin has been charged, and the measure of ‘recognizance not to leave’ has been chosen against him,” said Oksana Starnikova, press secretary of the KhMAO prosecutor’s office. At the same time, she added that this preventive measure was due to the fact that Marat Sharifullin himself turned himself in and fully compensated for the damage caused to the Federal State Institution.

It was not possible to contact Mr. Sharifullin yesterday. As Rosprirodnadzor explained, he is on a business trip. His colleagues learned about the criminal case initiated against their leadership from a Kommersant correspondent. “Nobody officially informed us about this. There were no papers from the prosecutor’s office,” explained Alexey Kovalevsky, deputy head of Rosprirodnadzor for Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra, saying that his head was not involved in anything reprehensible.

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies believe that even if the case goes to court, Marat Sharifullin will get off with a fine, since the articles under which he is accused are not included in the category of serious ones and he himself admitted that he committed the crime.

DMITRY Kommersant-VASILIEV, Tyumen

The official turned out to be weak by nature