vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #613 / Special reports / Reading article...

The Leninsky court of Vladivostok on April 10 will hold hearings on the case of former Vladivostok mayor Vladimir Nikolayev who is charged with misspending funds from the city’s budget and has to pay 13 million rubles in damages.

Nikolayev was found guilty on December 24, 2007 of misspending funds and selling federal land plots to private individuals. The court sentenced Nikolayev to a suspended four and a half year imprisonment with three years parole and estimated the damages that must be paid to the city’s budget at 13 million rubles ($542,000).

The city’s prosecutor’s office forwarded a civil suit to the Leninsky court to force Nikolayev to pay the damages to the budget.

Nikolayev is ready to pay the full amount, new reports cited his advocates as saying Wednesday during the preliminary hearings of the case.

Meanwhile, Nikolayev’s deputy mayors are leaving their posts en masse after the recent prosecutor’s checks in the city’s administration. The investigators ruled that two officials, Igor Kovalyov and Alexander Melnik, can not hold administrative positions due to their lack of professional education and experience and that labor contracts with them should be terminated.

Another official, Vice-Mayor Yevgeny Melnikov turned out to be commercially linked with six firms, plus he has not announced all property in his declaration, the prosecutors said. The investigators filed a suit asking to stop labor contract with Melnikov.