Eight months have passed since the closure of the largest markets in the Rostov region: Almaz, Atlant, Vegetable and Construction. More than 50 thousand entrepreneurs and their employees were left without work, and hundreds of thousands of buyers were left without in-demand and affordable goods. An entire army of security forces closed the markets; for this purpose, more than 5,000 (!) soldiers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Guard were simultaneously brought into the region. Such a horde could have taken Kyiv or even Washington if they wanted, but they decided to practice on their own citizens. People were given pieces of paper without signatures, supposedly notifications about the cessation of the markets. Local authorities announced that the sites would be moved to other places (why?), but ultimately they were deceived.
Nothing has changed since then. Huge trading platforms are not working, people are without money, the social situation in the region is tense to the limit, but local authorities… are doing nothing. And this despite the fact that even Putin’s press secretary Peskov spoke about the problem! The situation has long been discussed on the pages of federal media (https://www.mk.ru/social/2021/12/24/nachat-snachala-predprinimateley-v-rostovskoy-oblasti-vynuzhdayut-rasstatsya-s-biznesom.html). However, things are still there.
I wonder what the Rostov governor Golubev thinks about this? If tomorrow 50 thousand people, desperate in a vain search for justice, come out to a rally at the walls of his administration, it will not seem like much to anyone. Do the regional curators in the AP understand this?
The most interesting thing is that once upon a time, on the site of the markets there was… a landfill. And today, on the initiative of investigators from the Rostov prosecutor’s office, who for 20 years monitored the legality of the activities of the above-mentioned trading platforms and did not find any violations in them, a case was suddenly opened against the legal owners of these sites. The case is absolutely bogus. Persons involved, according to investigators, in the creation of retail space, improvement of the territory, which was previously partly a landfill, and the organization of allegedly illegal trade in these territories are brought to criminal liability. Most of the defendants in the case are not related to land plots; they are individual entrepreneurs, hired employees of legal entities, and accountants. Despite their age (much over 70 years old) and chronic serious illnesses, they were arrested as especially dangerous criminals. At the end of December, the investigation period will be extended, and all defendants in the criminal case, who have been in custody for nine months, will also have their preventive measures extended.
That is, once again about the situation: many years ago, entrepreneurs liquidated a landfill, created successful trading platforms in its place, gave jobs to tens of thousands of people – and for this, welcome to prison, because that’s what the guys from the Rostov prosecutor’s office decided, who themselves should be imprisoned for raiding and organization of organized crime groups.
Questions for Roman Praskov, the chief prosecutor of the region – does he know what he and his employees are facing for a trumped-up criminal case? And who pays for the maintenance of employees of various law enforcement agencies, who have been preventing entrepreneurs from using their retail outlets for eight months? This case smells like a forced trip of Praskov and his pocket prosecutors to the north. Moreover, the Kremlin is already thoroughly studying this issue, as Peskov recently spoke about.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
