Photo: Alexey Danichev/RIA Novosti< /p>
Mass searches took place on February 8 in the offices of housing and road enterprises in several districts of the city. About 200 employees of the economic police, investigators and SOBR were involved in operational-search activities.
Law enforcement agencies from 9 am to evening worked simultaneously at 60 addresses in Vasileostrovsky, Vyborgsky, Kalininsky, Kronstadt, Moscow, Nevsky, Petrogradsky, Primorsky and Frunzensky districts. They were interested in housing and communal services, as well as contractors of housing organizations for cleaning roofs, yards and roads from ice and snow. During the searches, contractual, financial and reporting documentation was seized.
By the middle of the day, the prosecutor's office of St. Petersburg explained that investigative actions were being carried out within the framework of several criminal cases on the facts of embezzlement of funds by organizations involved in cleaning the city from snow and ice (number of cases, articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation under which they are being investigated, and defendants have not yet been named) . The investigation intends to prove that funds for cleaning roads and roofs from the city budget were purposefully allocated, but were spent on the ground for other purposes, which led to the snow collapse.
In other words, there were wipers on paper, but there were none on the street.
The press service of the supervisory agency «Novaya» reported that the initiation of criminal cases was preceded by prosecutor's checks in December and January against St. Petersburg enterprises that maintain the road network and roofs of houses in the winter. Employees of the prosecutor's office, together with the internal affairs bodies, the tax inspectorate, as well as the control department of the city administration, checked compliance with the law when organizing the cleaning of roads and roofs in winter, just like they did in 2019. Then the inspectors also revealed a discrepancy between the declared and involved resources for cleaning. But three years ago, criminal proceedings did not come to the fore. The first snowy winter under Beglov brought him only the glory of a governor with a shovel and a presentation for shortcomings in his work from the prosecutor's office.
Winter in St. Petersburg. Photo: EPA-EFE
This time the demand may be much more serious. It is difficult to predict whether the investigation will lead to the highest offices in Smolny, but the prosecutor's office took control of all the criminal cases in which searches were carried out on February 8.
By coincidence, February 8 is exactly at the time when searches were carried out throughout the city — an incident occurred in the Vyborgsky district, clearly showing how the work of housing and communal services organizations in St. in clearing ice and snow from the roof of a house at 94 Bolshoi Sampsonievsky Prospekt. After that, a worker went downstairs to remove snow thrown from the roof from the yard. At that moment, an ice block fell on top of him. The man received a head injury incompatible with life, and died before the arrival of an ambulance.