The court arrested the former head of Perm Memorial in absentia on charges of smuggling cultural property

The Leninsky District Court of Perm arrested in absentia the former head of the local Memorial, Robert Latypov, in the case of large-scale smuggling of cultural property (part 3 of article 30; clause “c” of part 2 of article 226.1 of the Criminal Code). This was reported by the publications “Zvezda|Perm” and “New Companion” .

According to the security forces, Latypov, together with the ex-head of the Center for Historical Memory, Alexander Chernyshov, tried to take documents from the Memorial archive to Germany. Their cases are considered separately. In early April, Chernyshovwas sentenced to three years probation

Robert Latypov lives outside of Russia. The human rights activist told Mediazona that in March 2023, they wanted to transfer the Perm Memorial archive to Moscow “for safe storage,” but it was intercepted by the FSB. He emphasized that there were no historical documents (case files, cards of those repressed), but only documents from Memorial itself.

“That is, these are orders for the organization, these are minutes of meetings, minutes of meetings of the board of the organization, lists of participants, official correspondence, applications for grants,” the ex-head of Perm Memorial explained to Mediazona. At the same time, Latypov adds, all these papers were studied by employees of the Ministry of Justice two years ago during the next inspection.

The investigation carried out two examinations, one of which established that 30 documents were of historical and cultural value. Latypov put his signature under all these documents.

Perm Memorial in an open letter called the criminal case fabricated: “This is a malicious act on the part of the security forces, the purpose of which is to discredit the name of our organization and the results of its many years of work.”