Belykh case reveals flaw of Russian law enforcement: lack of mercy for the ill – Kudrin

Nikita Belykh file photo

MOSCOW. Feb 2 (Interfax) – The case of Nikita Belykh, the former governor of the Kirov region, who has been sentenced to eight years in jail, is a manifestation of the absence of mercy for sick people, Russia’s former finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, said.

“Among other things, the Belykh case revealed the most anti-humane flaw of our law enforcement system: the absence of mercy for sick people,” Kudrin wrote on Twitter on Friday.

Alexei Kudrin file photo

On Thursday, Moscow’s Presnensky District Court sentenced Belykh to eight years in a high-security penal colony and fined him 48.2 million rubles for taking a 400,000-euro bribe from businessman Yury Sudgaimer. Belykh was cleared of taking a 200,000-euro bribe from businessman Albert Laritsky.

The court also banned Belykh from working in bodies of municipal and state authority for three years after his term.

In the course of the preliminary and judicial investigation, Belykh and his lawyers said his health was worsening in detention, and the former governor was hospitalized in the hospital of the Matrosskaya Tishina prison several times.

[featured images are file photos from other occasions]

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