In Adygea, coronavirus outbreak triggers a criminal case

In Adygea, the head of the rural settlement in the Krasnogvardeisky District allowed a funeral ceremony with participation of crowds of people, and that fact provoked the outbreak of COVID-19. This follows from a version of investigators announced on May 25. A criminal case is being investigated under the article on negligence.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the "Rospotrebnadzor" (Russian Federal Agency for Consumer Supervision) Department for Adygea claimed that there was an outbreak of the coronavirus in the region and that it was caused by the crowded funeral ceremony held in the village of Bzhedugkhabl in the Krasnogvardeisky District. On May 21, despite requests of local residents, Albert Osmanov, the head of the Krasnogvardeisky District, was dismissed from his position.

According to investigators, in contradiction with the decree issued by the leader of Adygea, the head of the Sadovsky rural settlement (which includes the village of Bzhedugkhabl) failed to organize control over the entrance to the village. "Despite the ban on holding corporate events with the participation of a large number of people and the direct instruction of the operational headquarters dated April 17, 2020 to prevent the accumulation of citizens in cemeteries, the head of the Sadovsky rural settlement did not take any measures to implement the above restrictions during the funeral ceremony," reported the press service of the Investigating Department for Adygea of the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF). The investigators suggest that the official's inaction led to a massive infection with the coronavirus of participants in the funeral ceremony and then their relatives and friends, the ICRF's Investigating Department for Adygea reported.

According to a message posted late in the evening on May 25 on the official website of the ICRF's Investigating Department for Adygea, the criminal case is being investigated under Part 1 of Article 293 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (negligence).

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on May 26, 2020 at 10:54 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.