Ex-head of the Khabarovsk Territory Sergey Furgal was sentenced to 22 years in prison

On February 10, the judge of the Lyubertsy City Court of the Moscow Region announced the verdict of the former governor of the Khabarovsk Territory Sergey Furgal: 22 years in a strict regime colony. This is reported by TASS.

Earlier, the jury found Sergey Furgal guilty of contract killings of competitors in 2004 and 2005, when he was engaged in business. Investigators believe that Furgal's subordinates threw two grenades into the garage of scrap metal buyer Alexander Smolsky, but he survived. They, as the prosecution insisted, shot businessman Evgeny Zorya and a man from Furgal's entourage Oleg Bulatov, who allegedly knew about the murder of Zorya.

The prosecutor demanded 23 years in prison for Sergey Furgal. The other defendants, Andrei Karepov, Marat Kadyrov and Andrei Paley, were found guilty on all counts. Of all the persons in the dock, the jury found only Kadyrov deserving of leniency on the episode of attempted murder.

Sergey Furgal is sure that the case against him was fabricated, and it has a political background. On February 8, after the jury announced the verdict, both Furgal himself and the other defendants applauded. Their bewilderment, as well as the public, was caused, among other things, by the wording: "unidentified weapons purchased in an unidentified place, from unidentified persons, were transported on an unidentified transport - guilty".

It should be noted that when the decision on the form of legal proceedings was made, Sergey Furgal said that "only a jury — the court of the people will be able to sort out this case and determine where the truth is and where the lie is". The lawyer of the former governor, Alexander Startsev, called his client's case unique: "For the first time in the history of modern Russia, the dismissal of the governor was caused by bringing him to criminal responsibility for committing crimes twenty years ago."

Residents of the Khabarovsk Territory are confident in the innocence of their "people's governor". Since the day of his arrest - July 9, 2020 - they have been taking to the streets protesting against this criminal case and demanding that Furgal be returned to the region. Khabarovsk rallies became the longest in the history of the country, as well as the only large-scale actions in support of the Russian governor.