The Feodosia city court has taken into custody for two months the former mayor of Feodosia Andrei Lebedev. He is accused of abuse of power. According to Kommersant, being the head of the city, he sold municipal land for next to nothing, and then the plots were resold at an inflated price.
Andrei Lebedev was detained on Monday, on the same day searches and interrogations were held in the administration of Feodosia. The investigating authorities have not yet given any official comments.
Mr. Lebedev served as the head of the city from December 2021 to July 2022, when, on the advice of the head of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, he wrote a letter of resignation. Commenting on this event, the governor said that the city leadership was given time to eliminate all identified systemic deficiencies, but the results of this work were unsatisfactory.
As Kommersant was told by a source in the law enforcement system of the Republic of Crimea, the ex-head of Feodosia is charged with part 3 of Art. 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (abuse of authority with causing grave consequences). It is possible that in the near future another criminal case may be opened against him on charges of organizing a criminal community or participating in it.
According to the investigation, Andrei Lebedev, being the head of Feodosia, repeatedly sold municipal land by the sea to close businessmen at a reduced price. Then this land was resold many times more expensive. For example, one of the plots worth 80 million rubles was sold five times cheaper, and then resold for 300 million rubles.
In addition, the former head of the city is suspected of providing “his” contractors with contracts for construction work.
In the case, according to the testimony of some employees of the administration of Feodosia, the names of former high-ranking heads of law enforcement agencies of Crimea also appear, at the direction of which illegal transactions were allegedly made.
The Feodosia City Court granted the prosecution’s petition, choosing Andrei Lebedev a measure of restraint in the form of detention until March 28, 2023. According to Kommersant’s information, Mr. Lebedev refuses to admit guilt, insisting that he acted within the law. According to him, there is a certain order in the city, adopted by the city council, which allows you to buy land plots for 20% of their value, subject to a number of requirements.
Recall that in 2018 in the Crimea, the former head of the administration of Feodosia, Dmitry Shchepetkov, was sentenced to eight years in prison and paid 42 million rubles. corruption fines. In 2021, he was released on parole.