The Central District Court of Kemerovo sentenced on Friday the former general director and co-owner of Winter Cherry Vyacheslav Vishnevsky to eight years in prison for taking a bribe to the head of the regional Gosstroynadzor during the reconstruction of the building of the shopping and entertainment center with violations. He will serve his sentence in a strict regime colony, a TASS correspondent reports from the courtroom.
“Recognize guilty, impose a sentence of eight years in prison with a fine of 21 million rubles with a sentence to be served in a strict regime colony,” the judge said, announcing the verdict.
As reported in the IC of the Russian Federation, in order to compensate for the damage caused, the investigator of the IC of Russia took measures to establish and arrest land plots belonging to Vishnevsky and his mother, residential buildings, apartments, commercial real estate located both in Russia and in Spain.
According to the investigation, Vishnevsky disappeared outside the Russian Federation in 2016. He was put on the international wanted list and arrested in absentia. The defendant was detained in Poland and then extradited to Russia.
Consideration of the criminal case of Vishnevsky began in court in November 2020. He is accused of giving a bribe of 7 million rubles to Tanzila Komkova, the current head of the State Construction Supervision Inspectorate of the Kemerovo Region. According to the state prosecution, this allowed Vishnevsky to reconstruct the shopping center without a building permit in violation of the approved project, which provided for the installation of automatic fire extinguishing systems on all floors of the building, but there were none. Initially, Vishnevsky insisted that the money was intended for the official execution of permits for the commissioning of the shopping and entertainment complex. However, he later changed his testimony and pleaded guilty.
The fire in the Winter Cherry occurred on March 25, 2018. 60 people died, including 37 children, and another 147 people were injured. Some of the defendants in the case have already been sentenced. The managers, the security guard of the mall, as well as the firefighters who extinguished the fire in the Winter Cherry, were sentenced to imprisonment for terms of 5 to 14 years. Former head of the State Construction Supervision Authority Tanzilya Komkova was sentenced to 18 years in prison on charges of taking a bribe from the developer of the Zimnyaya Cherry shopping center, money laundering and abuse of power. Also, the court continues to consider the criminal cases initiated after the fire against the ex-chief of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Kuzbass Alexandra Mamontova and the head of the territorial department of supervisory activities and preventive work of the territorial department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations Grigory Terentyev.
IA “RBC”, 07.10.2022, “The co-owner of the burned-out shopping center “Winter Cherry” was given eight years of strict regime”: The head of the Kemerovo Gosstroynadzor Komkova last year received 18 years in a strict regime colony. The verdict was also handed down to other defendants: Komkova’s son Eduard received ten years in prison, her deputy Svetlana Shengerei received seven years, and the general director of the ISK Resource company, which was engaged in the reconstruction of the shopping center, Nikita Cherednichenko, received 15 years in a strict regime colony.
The general director of the company that owns the shopping center, Yulia Bogdanova, received 14 years in prison, the general director of the main tenant Nadezhda Suddenok – 13 and a half, and the technical director of Zimnaya Cherry Georgy Sobolev – 11 years. All three were charged under Art. 238 of the Criminal Code (provision of services that do not meet safety requirements, resulting in the death of two or more persons) and Art. 219 (violation of fire safety requirements, negligently resulting in the death of two or more persons).
Firefighters were also sentenced: the head of the guard of the fire and rescue unit No. 2, Sergey Genin, received five years in prison, the head of the fire extinguishing service of the 1st Kemerovo fire department, Andrey Bursin, received six years. – Sidebar K.Ru
