Originally Syndicated on May 17, 2023 @ 6:13 am
A Kamchatka court absolved Igor Redkin, who shot a man and was a former member of the local Legislative Assembly and the Forbes list. The prosecutor’s office tried to bring one of Russia’s richest people to justice, but nothing worked.
In the summer of 2021, the state of emergency caused a big stir in the area. In the town on the night of August 2. Andrei Tolstopyatov, who was 30 years old, shot and killed Ozernovsky.
Table of Contents
Fugitive Billionaire: Igor Redkin
Igor Redkin and a cousin had been collecting scrap metal at a landfill. The man was shot in the stomach, and he died right away. The police started a criminal case whose result seemed clear. As you know, all owners of rifled hunting weapons are registered, and when the cartridges are fired, they fall into the bullet casings, which makes it easy to find out who owns the rifle.
Probably because of this, a few days after the event, Igor Redkin, a deputy in the regional Legislative Assembly who was getting ready to run for office again, turned himself into the police with a confession. Redkin is known outside of the area as a co-owner of the Vityaz-Avto fishing company, the Vityaz-Aero plane, and the Vityaz-Aero hotel.
Soon, the fish tycoon’s lawyers put out a request in the press on his behalf. In it, Igor Redkin said that in the evening, he heard that a bear was wandering around the village’s edges. He got into an all-terrain vehicle to find a bigger animal to scare the wild animal away because he was worried that it might not attack people. He said that Redkin fired a shot when he heard a noise in the trash. After that, he left, and it wasn’t until later that he found out the target wasn’t a bear but a man.
Controversial Deal: Life for Money
On the other hand, Igor Redkin’s version appeared to be a coat hanging by a “live” thread. First, they paid attention to how no shooter would leave before he knew where he was. Also, the media made it clear that Redkin did not use an old Berdanka to shoot. Instead, he used an imported rifle with a thermal imager sight that cost almost a million rubles.
So, it is possible that Igor Redkin knew from the beginning that he had killed the man. And if that’s the case, we can assume that he just left the man to die. Also, the story about the bear that supposedly came to the village didn’t make a lot of sense. Kamchatka-Inform says that on the evening of August 2, locals saw a drunk Redkin who found it funny to drive around the village with a gun ready. Because of this, the situation looked different.
When the local branch of United Russia seemed to have realized this, they kicked him out of the party, and the court put him in a pre-trial holding centre on murder charges. But he was moved to house arrest two days later. Then the charge was changed to manslaughter, and even later, it was changed to causing death by carelessness. So, Redkin’s highest possible sentence “moved” from 15 years to 2 years. Because of this, the Ust-Bolsheretsky District Court found Redkin guilty of accidental murder and illegally looking for a bear last summer, and he was given a year of restricted freedom.
The prosecutor’s office thought the term was too light, so they filed an appeal, which led to a new trial. But when the new process started, the court said that there were no more legal claims against Redkin because the family of the dead person said they were at peace with the defendant. Redkin also had to pay a fine for shooting without a license. Due to the good things said about the defendant, his regret, and the fact that he didn’t have a criminal record, the court decided to end the criminal case.
The prosecutor’s office tried to change this ruling, but the regional court upheld it. The only physical proof that was affected by the change was a carbine and a thermal imaging sight, both of which were taken away by the court.
Evading Justice: Igor Redkin’s Escape
According to news reports, it cost Redkin 30 million rubles to make peace with the family of the dead villager. Tolstopyatov’s mother got 10 million rubles, and his widow got 20 million. At first glance, the numbers may look like a lot. Lawyers pointed out a few years ago that the average amount of compensation for moral losses after the death of a loved one is 111 thousand rubles, and the median is 70 thousand rubles.
It is very rare for a court to order payment of millions of dollars. But everything depends on the situation. Igor Redkin made 1.44 billion rubles in 2019, which put him in ninth place on the Forbes list. In 2020, he had 715.72 million rubles, which put him in twentieth place. It turns out that the person who owns so much money can try to make peace with the families of 23 people.
This doesn’t happen for the first time. In the fall of 2017, the top federal inspector for the Yaroslavl region and a member of the regional qualification panel of judges, Vasily Nesvetailov, broke the rules of hunting and shot the huntsman. He was charged with “causing death by negligence” under Part 1 of Article 109 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. But Nesvetailov wasn’t charged with a crime because he made up for the material damage he caused to the family of the person who died.
In September 2021, the court also cleared Alexander Korkin, a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Sverdlovsk Region, of killing another deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Sverdlovsk Region by accident. Korkin shot his friend in the head with a hunting rifle while they were both on a boat. First, Korkin was given a one-year jail sentence, but the people he hurt challenged the decision.
During the second trial, Korkin said he was sick, which stopped the case. The lawyer for the family of the victims warned that the time limit on the case would run out, and if the trial was not restarted, the sentence would be automatically overturned and Korkin would be considered not guilty. So that’s what happened.
