On January 24, 2001, the Public Prosecutor’s Office halted its criminal investigation against Viktor Gitin, Head of Yabloko in Krasnoyarsk Area and deputy of the State Duma of the second convocation, due to a “lack of corpus delicti” (Article 5 of the Criminal Code of the RF).

The criminal proceedings against Gitin were launched by the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the Krasnoyarsk Area on March 24, 2000. Gitin was arrested in Moscow and brought to a remand prison in Krasnoyarsk. In April he was indicted on charges of taking a bribe of excessive proportions. Between April and July 2000, Gitin was kept under arrest, before being released under guarantees from his colleagues in the Yabloko party and the State Duma. During the investigation, Gitin suffered two heart attacks.

Gitin was charged with facilitating, for a fee, the transfer of funds allotted by the Government to develop fields in the Low Angara region, to the deposit of a commercial bank when he was Deputy Head of the Budget Committee of the State Duma.

Since the arrest of Gitin the deputies of Yabloko referred on several occasions to the political nature of the “Gitin case” connected with his opposition to the present governor of Krasnoyarsk Area Alexander Lebed.

On July 19, 2000, 365 deputies of the State Duma voted to dispatch an inquiry to the Public Prosecutor, urging him to examine the Gitin case and punish those guilty of violating the law during the investigation.

The Criminal Investigator of the Public Prosecutor’s office, Senior Justice Counsellor, Yuri Lukyanov , called in to examine the facts and circumstances of the violations, confirmed that such violations had taken place.

“We are pleased that the case has been closed. However, the guilty have not been punished, even the small fry are not named. Obviously we are not going to leave this unpunished,” noted First Deputy Head of the Yabloko faction in the State Duma Sergei Ivanenko in a statement to the press.

He also stressed that “the Gitin case was fabricated, which was clear from the very outset.” However, the significant public repercussions have made it possible to “wring an admittance of this fact from the Public Prosecutor’s Office”.

See also:

The section on “The Viktor Gitin Case” at Yabloko’s web-site