Former Norilsk Mayor Akhmetchin gets 6 months corrective labor
KRASNOYARSK. Oct 19 (Interfax) - Former Norilsk Mayor Rinat Akhmetchin, who was charged with negligence following the spill of 20,000 tonnes of fuel in Taymyr, has been sentenced to six months of corrective labor, the press service for the Krasnoyarsk Territory Court told Interfax.
"The court sentenced him to six months of corrective labor and ordered him to pay 15% of his wages," the press service said.
According to earlier reports, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Akhmetchin based negligence in early September. According to investigators, Akhmetchin, as head of Norilsk and having received information on the spill of more than 21,000 tonnes of oil products from a fuel tank at Heat and Power Plant No. 3 of the Norilsk-Taymyr Energy Company outside the territory of an industrial site, "failed to enact a state of emergency in a timely manner and failed to organize efforts to deal with the aftermath [of the spill] and prevent the pollution of the soil and the waters of rivers in the territory of Norilsk with diesel fuel " on May 29-31, 2020.
Thus, "Akhmetchin's lack of action increased the damage done to soil and water objects across a vast area of the region," the Investigative Committee said.
Akhmetchin resigned from the post of mayor in late July.
On May 29, 2020, a fuel tank at Heat and Power Plant No. 3 of the Norilsk-Taimyr Energy Company, which is part of the Nornickel group, lost pressure and began spilling oil products after its foundation dipped. As a result, around 20,000 tonnes of oil products leaked into the soil, as well as the Daldykan and Ambarnaya rivers, which flow into Lake Pyasino.
The Russian Investigative Committee initiated four criminal cases in relation to the accident. Head of HPP-3 Pavel Smirnoff, chief engineer Alexei Stepanov, head of the plant's boiler and turbine workshop Vyacheslav Starostin, and deputy chief engineer of HPP-3 Yury Kuznetsov were arrested. Starostin and Kuznetsov's measures of restraint were changed to house arrest in late July.
The accident is the second largest emergency of this type ever recorded in Russia, following the spill of 94,000 tonnes of oil in Komi in 1994, the cleanup of which took six years. The Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources (Rosprirodnadzor) has estimated the damage from the accident in Norilsk at a record 147.8 billion rubles.
