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In Saint Petersburg, chief of criminal community Leonid Kolesnikov and his accomplices to stand trial

The St. Petersburg Investigations Directorate of the Investigative Committee of Russia has finished the investigation into 62-year-old Leonid Kolesnikov and 13 other persons accused, depending on the role of each, of committing offenses under Parts 1 and 2 of Article 209; Parts 1 and 2 of Article 210; Paragraphs A and B of Part 4 of Article 162; Paragraphs A and B of Part 3 of Article163; Paragraph A of Part 3 of Article 126; Part 3 of Article 30; Paragraphs A, G, and I of Part 2 of Article 105; Part 3 of Article 222; Part 3 of Article 222.1; Part 2 of Article 330; Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of Russia; and Paragraph F of Article 102 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (banditry; organization of criminal community and participation in it; robbery; extortion; kidnapping; arbitrariness; murder and attempted murder; illegal traffic of firearms, explosives and explosive devices).

It was established that, from June 1994 to March 2010, Kolesnikov had built a gang and a criminal community under his leadership, being a criminal authority and unwilling to live in accordance with the law and moral principles of society, having chosen the antisocial lifestyle associated with professional criminal activity.

Kolesnikov developed a clear organizational structure of the criminal organizations under his leadership, which were distinguished by sustainability, stability of the membership, close communication between their participants, coordination of their actions, strict discipline, consistency of forms and methods of criminal activity, the repeated commission of especially serious crimes, and intent to commit them in the future. In this, Kolesnikov was making decisions related to planning, logistics, organization of illegal activities, was engaged in search for objects of criminal activities, developed plans, distributed criminal roles among himself and other participants, controlled the preparation and commission of offences, implementation of conspiracy measures by the participants, and took part in commission of the crimes in person.

During the operation of the gang and the criminal community from 1994 to 2017 the accused had committed the following offenses: kidnapping and murder of a man; robbery attack against a forwarding agent attended by theft of approximately 13 tons of red caviar of total value of 13 million rubles; attempted murder of three persons out of malicious motives; arbitrariness and robbery attack in the Pesochny rural settlement against an entrepreneur--the founder of a commercial entity subject to theft of approximately 450,000 rubles; a 150,000 rubles swindling against the founder of a commercial entity; robbery attack, kidnapping, and extortion of three entrepreneurs and stealing over 10 million rubles and a car from them; extortion of two entrepreneurs; and a robbery attack attended by theft of material values worth over 1.2 million rubles.

Members of the criminal community held annual general meetings where overachievers were awarded special badges featuring the letter K.

A significant number of firearms, ammunition, explosives, and explosive devices stored by the gang and the criminal community to commit crimes were seized in the course of the criminal investigation.

The criminal case has amounted to about 100 volumes, and about 100 different examinations have been arranged and conducted during the investigation.

In the nearest future, the criminal case with the approved indictment will be sent to the court to be tried on the merits.

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