Z-mayor of Pechenga faces 10 years in prison for failed heating to soldier families
According to Russian military investigators, Mayor Andrei Kuznetsov was part of an organised fraud group that enriched itself on coal.
The mayor of the municipality that is located along Russia’s border with Norway and Finland could face up to ten years in prison if he is found guilty of the charges, the Russian version of the Barents Observer reports.
According to the Chief Military Investigating Department in Moscow, Kuznetsov has been involved in fraud committed by an organised group on a particularly large scale.
In a video, the Military Investigating Department explains that Kuznetsov and his accomplices allegedly submitted documents containing knowingly false information and that they inflated costs of the coal acquired for local boilers.
Also charged in the case are Aleksandr Kobytev, the head of company PromVoenStroy and former Murmansk energy minister, and his deputy Armen Arshakyan.
Andrei Kuznetsov is now reported to be in house arrest.
The charges came only a few days after Murmansk Governor Andrei Chibis visited the Pechenga area to inspect the heating situation in late January.
The mayor of Pechenga and his team "have made a number of serious mistakes," Governor Chibis said after the visit. He soon replaced Kuznetsov with Aleksei Penshin, the former mayor of the naval town Zaozersk.
The housing situation for military families is an issue of serious concern for regional authorities. Federal authorities have allocated major sums for renovation and upgrades, but the housing situation remains dire. The housing situation in the regional military towns was an issue dedicated major attention in Chibis’ recent meetings with the Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin.
Andrei Kuznetsov has been in charge of the Pechenga district since 2020. After the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine, he is known for having painted a large Z on his car.
