Kozhanova implicated in case against ex-head of Marii-El ready to testify, doesn't admit guilt
MOSCOW. April 14 (Interfax) - Natalya Kozhanova, director of the Region 12 TV company in Marii-El, who is implicated in the corruption case against former Marii-El head Leonid Markelov, is ready to testify but does not admit her guilt.
"I had a hypertensive crisis yesterday. I am ready to testify and get to the bottom of the case. I am just a pensioner from Yoshkar-Ola who is paid 18,000 rubles [a month]. Yoshkar-Ola is a provincial town, I am not going to hide and I cannot leave, and my foreign travel passport has been taken away from me," Kozhanova said at a hearing at Moscow's Basmanny District Court.
A criminal case has been opened against Markelov on charges of receiving a bribe in the amount of over 235 million rubles, Investigative Committee official Svetlana Petrenko told Interfax on Thursday.
Markelov is suspected of receiving over 235 million rubles from Nikolai Krivash, founder of the Akashevskaya factory, for patronage and assistance in the allocation of state financing for the development of the agricultural sector, Petrenko said. The investigation believes Nataliya Kozhanova acted as the intermediary in the crime, she said.