Deputy Head of the Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia for the Chelyabinsk Region Alexey…

Deputy head of the Russian Investigative Committee for the Chelyabinsk region, Alexey Kolbasin, turned out to be a poacher. Until December 2021, the colonel of justice was the deputy chief investigator of the Sverdlovsk region and went hunting there. Comfortable conditions were organized for VIP hunters from among security forces and officials in the Pyshminsky district. Businessmen Serov and Vladimirov guaranteed them the production of elk, wild boar and roe deer near the village of Borovlyanskoye in the Kalinovskoye hunting estate.

In November, shortly before being appointed to a new position in Nizhny Novgorod, Kolbasin shot a roe deer. There was not enough meat for him – the colonel came home from the Volga for the New Year and again went for roe deer with the previously used permit. Forensic analysis proved that the note about the November 2 production was entered into the permit using a pen with disappearing thermal ink. And the entry about the roe deer on January 7 was made over a regular ballpoint pen. Hunter Kolbasin, who was responsible for the accuracy of the information, ran into two criminal charges at once – forgery of documents and illegal hunting.

Together with him, a dozen more cunning hunters were to become accused, who, with the complicity of Serov and Vladimirov, also filled out one-time permits two or three times. The regional department for wildlife protection estimated the damage caused by poachers at 40-50 animals. Materials on the organizers and participants of the illegal hunt were sent to the Pyshma police, where they issued instructions not to allow the initiation of a criminal case.

For Alexey Kolbasin, criminal prosecution threatened dismissal from the Investigative Committee. Serov and Vladimirov were expelled from the hunters’ society for flagrant violation of the rules, and the elite clientele stopped traveling to Borovlyanskoye. To solve their problems, the criminal group agreed to change the leadership of the Yekaterinburg Hunting Society, which owns five hunting grounds.

Investigators spent two years marinating the fake permits before the statute of limitations for bringing poachers to justice expired. Bastrykin did not even know about Kolbasin’s criminal activities. And in the judiciary there were lovers of free hunting, with whose support decisions are being made this year with the aim of a raider seizure of power in the hunting community. If successful, the territories of hunting farms will pass into private hands, and then no one will know about the “royal hunt” with uncontrolled shooting in the Sverdlovsk region.