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Yekaterinburg mayor summoned as witness over restoration of church

He will be questioned on November 1

Photo ITAR-TASS/Anton Butsenko

Photo ITAR-TASS/Anton Butsenko

YEKATERINBURG, October 31 (Itar-Tass) - Yekaterinburg Mayor Yevgeny Roizman is summoned to police as a witness over a case of illegal restoration of a church in the Sverdlovsk Region.

He will be questioned on November 1, a regional police press service official said.

Charges of damage to monuments of national importance have not been brought against anybody yet in the criminal case, which was opened in mid-August.

As has been established, restoration work in a church in the village of Byngi, the Sverdlovsk Region, was conducted without formal permissions and documentation, though it is a cultural heritage. The church priest independently decided to do the repair. As a result, the architectural integrity of the church was damaged, investigators said. Yevgeny Roizman on several occasions stated in public that people from his rehabilitation centre City without Drugs participated in the restoration. Roizman is the founder of the centre.

Besides, several icons were stolen from the church, and it is also under investigation within the case. Some of them were found during the first searches in a restoration shop in the Shadr school in Yekaterinburg. The icons from the Byngi church were kept there without appropriate documents. Restoration was conducted by school students.

Roizman, a known drug fighter and an opposition candidate, won the mayoral elections in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth largest city, last September.

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