The Investigative Committee opened a case against the acting head of the gold miner Petropavlovsk, who took the office by force

The acting head of the gold mining company Petropavlovsk, Maxim Meshcheryakov, became a defendant in a criminal case, according to a company press release.

The information was confirmed to RBC by the representative of the Moscow department of the Investigative Committee, Yulia Ivanova. She added that in addition to the article on arbitrariness, the case is also being investigated under the article on theft. The investigation estimated the damage at 450 thousand rubles. What status Meshcheryakov is in is not specified.

As noted in Petropavlovsk, the case was opened due to the events of August 26-27. Then, as Forbes wrote , employees of the Pokrovsky Mine company, part of the Petropavlovsk group, refused to let Meshcheryakov into the office - he was appointed head instead of the company’s founder, Pavel Maslovsky.

Meshcheryakov forcibly entered the office, accompanied by “a dozen and a half athletic people,” the publication wrote. They jumped over the turnstiles at the entrance and took away the electronic passes from the guards. In the office, people behaved “rudely and boorishly towards employees: they knocked on office doors, shouted, used physical force and insulted people.”

Petropavlovsk is one of the largest gold mining enterprises in Russia. On August 17, the company's shareholders appointed Meshcheryakov as acting head of the company instead of its founder. The trade union of Pokrovsky mine workers was concerned about this appointment, questioning Meshcheryakov’s qualifications.