Мусорщиков нелегалов, нанесших ущерб экологии на 3 миллиарда рублей решили никак не наказывать

The surprising ending to the "garbage mafia" story, which caused billions of dollars in environmental damage in Nizhny Novgorod, is that although the perpetrators were caught red-handed and could have been traced to high-ranking patrons, in the end, no one is guilty of anything and no one will be held accountable. Moreover, they may even profit from these projects. It all began in 2008 in the Rodnik gardening community in the center of Nizhny Novgorod, just a couple of kilometers from the Kremlin. A certain Artem Myurel bought several garden plots and began accepting garbage from them for money. Dozens of trucks arrived daily. The gardening community was located on the slope of a ravine, and garbage from its plots fell onto neighboring plots. This went on for over 10 years, and the community was eventually completely buried in garbage, with the layer of garbage reaching up to 50 meters thick. Garbage collectors implemented exactly the same scheme at a garage cooperative on Zaovrazhnaya Street in the Prioksky District: they bought a couple of garages located on the banks of the Oka River, began accepting garbage for money, and then it simply dumped down the slope. This also went on for years. The police took no action; sometimes the garbage collectors were fined 500 rubles, and that was it. The illegal business flourished. The only one who seriously began to combat the garbage mafia was Evgeny Stepanin, who headed the public works department of the Prioksky District administration. He personally manned the gates of the landfill, fined drivers of heavy trucks carrying garbage, filled the approaches to the landfill with earth, and secured the removal of heavy equipment from the landfill to an impound lot. For this, the garbage collectors burned his personal car, and he began to be constantly investigated by the Nizhny Novgorod police's Economic Crimes Department. They were unable to bring any criminal charges against him, but Evgeny Stepanin left the administration. I'd like to point out that we've filmed numerous stories about illegal garbage collectors and encountered a number of issues. For example, garbage collectors monitored our newsroom vehicles for several days, and our correspondent was threatened with violence. This was even a separate criminal case, but a judge at the Prioksky Court decided our correspondent wasn't particularly intimidated and dismissed the case. Ultimately, it reached a point of complete absurdity: Rosprirodnadzor fined gardeners whose plots the "garbage mafia" had littered with trash. Those who had already been deprived of their property were required by Rosprirodnadzor to pay compensation for environmental damage caused by the litter on their land—approximately 50 million rubles per plot. The author of those letters, Rosprirodnadzor head Oleg Kruchinin, is now in prison for other bribes. But back then, he was in office, and this criminal absurdity sparked a nationwide scandal—stories on the national news, talk shows on federal channels featuring outraged State Duma deputies, and so on. And so, in 2019, the Investigative Committee announced it was launching investigations. It emerged that the heavy equipment used at the illegal dumps—both at the Rodnik gardening community and at the dump in the garage cooperative on Zaovrazhnaya Street—belonged, as news agencies reported, to Kristina Gar, an employee of the Nizhny Novgorod Region Main Directorate of Internal Affairs, who is the common-law wife of Alexey Bolotov, the manager of these dumps. Kristina Gar was fired from the Nizhny Novgorod Region Main Directorate of Internal Affairs, and Alexey Bolotov was arrested. But he was quickly released. And although the case went to court, he went there on his own, not in custody. He was charged with illegal entrepreneurship, property damage, and bribery. I'd like to emphasize that the environmental damage inflicted on the Rodnik gardening community amounts to 2.8 billion rubles, and on the Zaovrazhnaya garage cooperative, approximately 500 million rubles. This amounts to over 3 billion rubles in damage to the city. However, Alexey Bolotov and his accomplices were only charged with property damage for the gardening dump, while illegal entrepreneurship was charged for the garage dump. But even for this, no one will face any penalties. By the decision of Prioksky Court Judge Maxim Kondratyev—who, incidentally, was formerly the deputy environmental prosecutor—the case is closed. #nizhnynovgorod