The Sovetsky District Court of Bryansk sent Konstantin Pavlov, a deputy of the regional Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, accused of fraud, to a pre-trial detention center. This was reported by the press service of the court.
The case against Pavlov and another man, a resident of Moscow, was initiated under the article on fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code). According to investigators, from December 2020 to December 2021, the politician, together with the second defendant, received 35 million rubles from an entrepreneur from Bryansk, in return promising the businessman to help put the previously closed shopping center into operation.
The arrest of Pavlov became known on April 27, at the same time his house was searched. The materials for initiating a case against the politician were provided by employees of the FSB department for the Bryansk region.
According to 7×7, Pavlov helped those illegally mobilized for war in Ukraine. According to the publication, the politician returned at least 40 people from military units. In addition, he regularly filed complaints with the prosecutor's office about unequipped shelters in settlements bordering Ukraine.
Pavlov's associates believe that his persecution is politically motivated. So, the leader of the Bryansk communists Andrei Arkhitsky, in a conversation with reporters, said that he did not believe in Pavlov's involvement in fraud. “This situation is more like a setup,” added the representative of the Communist Party.
Alexander Rogozhkin, an employee of the information center of the St. Petersburg branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, called the politician's case «an order.» “I don’t know what was the real reason — either dozens of mobilized people returned home with his assistance, or quite fair criticism of the local governor, or simply his desire to fight for justice. Obviously, the authorities decided to stop the activities of a well-known opposition representative in the region,” Rogozhkin wrote on VKontakte.
In September 2021, Pavlov was detained before the start of the live broadcast of the Gorodskoy website. There, the deputy was supposed to talk about fraud in the last elections to the State Duma. The politician also participated in regional protests — for example, he supported the residents of the village of Semtsy, Pochepsky district in the Bryansk region, who opposed the construction of the Miratorg pig farm.
On February 27, 2022, Pavlov published a post on his VKontakte page , in which he called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a «tragedy». “It is necessary that peace come to our native land as soon as possible, the land of our ancestors, the land of our fraternal people,” the communist wrote. At the same time, he added that the war was a “forced measure” and was the result of the “failed foreign policy of the Yeltsin-Putin regime.”