Chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin has held a monthly meeting with citizens where he heard complaints from people from Nizhny Novgorod and Kursk Regions, and the initiative group of Kuban farmers.

Residents of Nizhny Novgorod and Kursk Regions came to complain about investigative authorities which had been refusing to open investigations in deaths of patients in regional hospitals for a long time. It was decided at the meeting to speed up all necessary procedural operations, to check legality of decisions made by investigators and to run forensic medical examinations at the Investigative Committee’s Forensic Examinations Center recently-built in Kazan.

The issue of independent forensic medical examinations is of key importance to Russian citizens. It often happens that injured parties are not able to get trustworthy information about cause-and-effect relation between the actions of doctors and grave consequences for patients including their death.

As of today there is only one center that can run independent forensic medical examinations at the Tatarstan Office of the Investigative Committee. Employees of the center are not bound by an unofficial rule to not turn in insiders. Their main task is to find out true circumstances of the incident. The center will run additional forensic medical examinations following the complaints of citizens received during today’s meeting.

In addition, the Chairman heard the initiative group of farmers of Krasnodar Territory who came to complain about hostile takeovers of their lands. This issue requires thorough analysis. Some of the complaints are going to be passed on to the Investigative Committee’s Central Office, while others are going to be dealt with at the Krasnodar Territory Office of the Investigative Committee.

There are court decisions on some of the complaints which have already entered legal force. The Investigative Committee has no authority to revise or cancel such judgements. Prosecutor’s offices have the right to appeal against the judgement and open an investigation due to new circumstances.

All the complaints and appeals received during the meeting will be considered by the Investigative Committee within its competence.

Acting Head of Media Relations                                                                                                               S.L. Petrenko