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Mayor of Tomsk charged with abuse of power

Ivan Klein pleaded not guilty

Tomsk Mayor Ivan Klein Danila Shostak/TASS

Tomsk Mayor Ivan Klein

© Danila Shostak/TASS

MOSCOW, November 14. / TASS /. Tomsk Mayor Ivan Klein was charged with abuse of power, the Investigative Committee press service told reporters on Saturday.

"He was charged with committing a crime under Part 2 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The accused pleaded not guilty," the department said.

Klein was detained in his office on November 13. On Saturday, at the request of the investigation, the court detained him.

The investigation believes that in 2016, the mayor, acting in the interests of Tomskoe Pivo (Tomsk Beer), of which he is the main shareholder, gave an illegal instruction to the head of the Department of Urban Planning and Architecture of the Tomsk Administration to enter in the geological information system inaccurate information about the presence of a 300-meter sanitary protection zone on the site where the enterprise is located. As a result, in January 2017, the general plan and rules for land use and development of Tomsk were changed, which is why the local entrepreneur was unable to use the land plot for the construction of residential buildings.

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