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Address of Investigative Committee on investigation against Alexander Mirilashvili

As we have informed before, the Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation against 44-year-old Alexander Mirilashvili over an attempt on the life of a police officer. According to the information we have, Mirilashvili have Russian and Israeli citizenship, has bread-baking business in Israel and visits Russia very rarely. To all appearance, he thought that those facts can justify his actions, or he somehow convinced himself that in the Russian Federation one can get away with an attempt on the life of a police officer. And the Russian law defines his actions as an attempt on the life of a police officer, no more, no less. This is obvious for everybody who has seen the footage from the scene, except for himself and his lawyers. But it’s their right. Our right and duty is to collect and solidify all the evidence of his involvement in the crime so that a court can make a final judgment on his guilt and punishment. I can assure that the investigation will be quick and impartial and nobody or nothing will stop us. At the same time we can’t take responsibility for all the other stages of the criminal procedure, the approval of the indictment and the trial.

I would like to make the situation clear to those who don’t understand it or for some reasons are trying to “pin” the traffic accident involving the “diamond boy” (that’s what they call him) on the Investigative Committee. I explain that traffic accidents are not in the competence of the Investigative Committee, the police handle them. I would also like to point out, when nobody have done so, why the name of the perpetrator has not been revealed for so long. The Russian law forbids revealing by media any information about minors, and this is what the relatives and so-called family friends tried to make him look like. At any rate, they tried very hard to hide the age of the young man, his citizenship and other information. They disguised very thoroughly any documentary traces of his staying in the hospital. By the way, investigators are going to work on the hospital as well. Only after it has been learned that Tomas Leviyev came of age on 27 September, any reasons to hide his name faded away. He committed this infamous traffic accident, that became the cause of all subsequent events that are already looked into by the Investigative Committee. Moreover, it has been revealed, that Leviyev is not even the citizen of Russia, but of Israel.

Unfortunately the law does not allow us to “educate” young oafs and their parents. But with such behavior they apparently challenge our society: the younger with no driving license puts lives of dozens of citizens in danger, while the senior one accompanies him together with bodyguards and encourages his “frolicking”. Of course a rhetorical question comes to mind: would they have guts to “frolic” this way in the state, whose citizenship they hold? I doubt it. They would have been “parked” while gathering speed.

And to conclude, I would like to ask our law-makers a non-rhetorical question. At present there is no doubt that Russia is the leader in the number of the killed in traffic accidents. The traffic accident-related death rate in Russia reaches 18.8 for 100 thousand people (in 2014), with the average number in European countries 5-9 people. So, will the traffic accident statistics get better, if the only punishment for driving without license is just a fine between 5 and 15 thousand rubles? One can take this sum, instead of the license. If caught you just give the money, and free to go on, until the next stop. Do you have any idea how may such diamond, tin, wooden boys and girls are there on the roads and each minute endanger our lives (for you to have that idea, I will tell: persons who do not have the driving license violate the road code about 400 thousand times each year). Maybe it is time to make driving without license equal to carrying a gun without a proper permission, which punishable by article 22 of the Russian Penal Code by criminal liability and up to 4 years in prison.

Head of Media Relations                                                                                                                           V.I. Markin