Smolensk court starts hearing theft of bank cards from deceased Polish delegation
SMOLENSK. April 23 (Interfax) - The Smolensk Garrison Military Court will have a pretrial conference on Tuesday with regard to four servicemen accused of stealing bank cards from Polish presidential delegation members who died in an air crash near Smolensk in early April 2010.
"The pretrial conference will be mostly a technical event held behind closed doors," assistant to the court chairman Yevgeny Sheven told Interfax.
Conscripts Sergei Syrov, Igor Pustovar, Yuri Sankov and Artur Pankratov have been charged with theft and conspiracy and a misappropriation attempt.
Detectives said that servicemen of military unit 06755 were assigned to cordon off the site of the crash of the Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft that carried Polish politicians and public figures on April 10, 2010.
Private Syrov found a bag and a wallet near the plane crash scene. He stole bank cards from the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites Secretary-General Andrzej Przewoznik with funds equivalent to 379,000 rubles. Syrov also found bank card pin codes written on a piece of paper in the wallet.
Syrov returned to base and told his mates Pustovar, Pankratov and Sankov about his discovery. He offered to withdraw money from the bank accounts. The soldiers left the base unpermitted and tried to withdraw the entire sum. They got only 59,000 rubles because of the withdrawal limits.