The case against Olga Zelenina was returned to the prosecutor's office

On Tuesday, the Bryansk Regional Court returned the “poppy case” to the prosecutor to eliminate significant violations, in which 13 people are accused, including businessman Sergei Shilov and an expert from the Penza Research Institute of Agriculture Olga Zelenina.

“Today, the court held the third session within the framework of preliminary hearings, which began in December last year. The defense petitioned for the return of the case to the prosecutor’s office due to numerous violations of the Criminal Procedure Law, and Judge Ustinov granted this petition,” lawyer Yevgeny Gubin, who represents Zelenina’s interests, told Mediazone.

He noted that there are more than 700 volumes in the resonant criminal case.

The criminal case was received by the Bryansk Regional Court from the Moscow City Court at the end of November. According to investigators, in 2011 Zelenina, an expert at the Penza Research Institute of Agriculture, at the request of businessman Shilov, wrote a letter stating that the 42 tons of poppies he was importing through the Bryansk customs did not contain drugs. The state prosecution believes that Zelenina's conclusions were aimed at destroying the results of the assessment made by the experts of the Federal Drug Control Service.

Six defendants in the case were taken into custody, seven more under a written undertaking not to leave the country. Zelenina was arrested in Penza in 2012 and taken into custody in Moscow. She spent more than a month in the pre-trial detention center, after which the court released her, but a written undertaking not to leave the capital was taken from her.

In early December 2014, Shilov, who was under house arrest, ended up in intensive care with a massive heart attack. According to Gubin's lawyer, the businessman has not yet taken part in the hearings, as he is still in the hospital.