All news

Rural teacher sentenced to seven years in prison for bribery

Human rights activists were indignant with the statement of public prosecutor Pavel Vereshchagin, who doubted that “a person surnamed Farber can help the village for free”

The Tver regional court sentenced former director of the Moshenka house of culture Ilya Farber to seven years and one month in a high security penitentiary over the criminal case for bribery and abuse of powers. He is also sentenced to pay a fine of three million rubles. Speaking with the last plea on Thursday, Farber did not plead guilty.

The Novye Izvestia daily recalled that Tverskoy regional court has earlier sentenced Farber to eight years in a high security penitentiary and a fine of 3,200,000 rubles. In November 2012, the Russian Supreme Court cancelled the verdict and sent the criminal case for a retrial.

According to criminal case file, the daily noted that Farber received 300,000 rubles from the director of a commercial organization in summer of 2011 that permitted to the subcontractor to continue the repairing works at the house of culture and took 132,000 more rubles a month later “for the signing of work completion certificate” from businessman Yuri Gorokhov. Actually the works were not done completely, and the detectives believe that by signing this act Farber inflicted a damage of 941,000 rubles to the budget.

Several media reported that the subcontractor did not hurry to fulfill the liabilities for repairs of the club; therefore, Farber allegedly invested some of his own money in the repairs. When the works were completed, the director of the house of culture demanded from the general director of the subcontracting company to repay the debt to him.

In 2010, Ilya Farber moved from Moscow to Moshenka village in the Ostashkov district of Tver region, where he worked as a teacher of drawing, literature and music, the Novye Izvestia daily reported. In 2011, he was appointed director of the local house of culture, the repairs of which became the reason for his accusation. The media reported that Farber got the reputation of a strange man in the village.

In his last plea on Thursday the defendant stated again that he does not plead guilty.

He also acknowledged that he had analyzed his mistakes, as he “had enough time for this.” “I have drawn proper conclusions. I will not be so credulous in the future and will not take administrative posts, at least in Russia. At these posts you have to make a choice permanently between the law and the benefit to people,” Farber said.

The Russian Presidential Council of Human Rights will check the criminal case against Ilya Farber, the Izvestia daily reported. Over ten members of the presidential council found the verdict unfair and therefore decided to draw attention of the public to serious, as they believe, violations that were made during the trial, a source in the presidential council told the daily.

Alexander Brod, Yelizaveta Glinka, Ivan Zasursky, Maria Kannabikh, Alexei Kozyrev, Stanislav Kucher, Nikolai Svanidze, Yelena Topoleva-Soldunova, Ilya Shablinsky, Maxim Shevchenko, Lilia Shibanova and Igor Yurgens said that they are discontent with the court verdict. Meanwhile, the human rights activists were indignant with a statement of public prosecutor Pavel Vereshchagin, who doubted that “a person surnamed Farber can help the village for free.”

The human rights activists want to find out why Ilya Farber was arrested by the officers of the Federal Security Service and why they were investigating the criminal case against him. They also find the anti-Semitic statement by the prosecutor at the trial impermissible.

Head of the Presidential Council of Human Rights Mikhail Fedotov supported the intentions of the human rights activists. He told the Izvestia daily that the presidential council will formulate the principles of conducting the analysis of the guilty verdict and will form an expert pool on August 22.

After the analysis the results will be reported to President Vladimir Putin, the presidential council pledged.

Along with the presidential council, other structures are also ready to act in support of Farber. So, the Public Chamber already stated to the Izvestia daily about the plans to help the convicted teacher.