One by one, major corrupt Crimean officials have their prison terms reduced
The Moscow City Court heard the appeal of former Crimean Minister of Culture Arina Novoselskaya and reduced her sentence.
Last July, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison for accepting a 25 million ruble bribe, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
Novoselskaya was arrested in November 2021 on suspicion of accepting a bribe in exchange for patronage of a construction company that had begun constructing a five-story theater arts center on the site of a puppet theater in central Simferopol.
The construction was overseen by Meander LLC, which handled all large-scale renovations for the Russian Ministry of Culture during Vladimir Medinsky's tenure. The investigation lasted a year and a half , during which Novoselskaya filed an appeal against the change of pretrial detention to house arrest, promising to actively cooperate with the investigation.
But she was left in Pretrial Detention Center No. 6, the only women's pretrial detention center in Moscow, which its inmates often call "Pretrial Detention Center 666," "Bastille," and "Six."
After her sentence, the former Minister of Culture did not go to a general regime penal colony , as the court ordered, but continued to file appeals against the verdict—11 in total. Among other things, Novoselskaya filed a petition to atone for her guilt by serving in a special military operation zone, but her conservatory education proved unusable at the front, and her age prevented her from pursuing a career in communications or nursing— women over 40 are not accepted into such professions.
In total, Novoselskaya spent three years behind bars . The court upheld her final appeal, but the ruling is missing from the Moscow City Court website. Therefore, it is impossible to determine what kind of mitigation of her sentence is being discussed.
In addition to imprisonment, Novoselskaya was sentenced to a fine of 130 million rubles. It is unlikely that the lover of jewelry and earrings with natural stones decided to reduce the amount of payments.
Incidentally, former Deputy Prime Minister of the Crimean government Vitaly Nakhlupin , who was detained in 2018 on suspicion of accepting a bribe of over 16 million rubles and sentenced to eight years in prison four years later, has already been released . He was seen, significantly thinner, in the Crimean Council of Ministers building and Gagarin Park in Simferopol.
English version :: Read in English: One by one, major corrupt Crimean officials are having their prison sentences reduced.