KEMEROVO, Russia -- The former director general and co-owner of a shopping mall that was destroyed by a fire in 2018, killing 60 people including 37 children, has been sentenced to eight years in prison.
The central district court in the city of Kemerovo sentenced Vyacheslav Vishnevsky on October 7 after he pleaded guilty to bribing the former director of the regional construction control agency, Tanzilya Komkova, to obtain a permission to renovate the building of a factory in the city and turn it into the Zimnyaya Vishnya (Winter Cherry) mall.
The mall was destroyed by the March 2018 blaze, one of the deadliest in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The court also ordered Vishnevsky to pay a fine of 21 million rubles ($346,600).
Vyacheslav Vishnevsky, the co-owner of the Zimnyaya Vishnya mall, under interrogation in Kemerovo in April 2020
Vishnevsky said he paid Komkova 7 million rubles ($115,500) and got permission for the renovation and documents allowing the renovated building to be used as a shopping mall.
Investigators concluded that the renovation of the building was made with violations of fire safety regulations that led to the tragedy. They said blocked fire exits, an alarm system that was turned off, and "glaring violations" of safety rules before the blaze started contributed to the high death toll.
Vishnevsky resided in the European Union from 2016. He was arrested in Poland in 2019 at Moscow's request and extradited to Russia in March 2020.
Komkova was sentenced to 18 years in prison on a charge of bribe-taking in December last year. Several other regional officials involved in the case were also sentenced to lengthy prison terms at the time.
In October 2021, managers and security officers of the mall were handed prison terms of between five and 14 years on charges of violating fire safety rules and negligence that led to loss of human lives.
A total of 16 people, including leaders of the regional Emergency Ministry, have been charged with crimes that investigators say led to or aggravated the tragedy.