KEMEROVO, Russia -- A court in Siberia has sentenced the former emergency situations minister of the Kemerovo region, Aleksandr Mamontov, to 10 1/2 years in prison over a 2018 fire in the regional capital that killed 60 people, including 37 children.
The central district court in the city of Kemerovo on June 27 also sentenced a former fire-safety inspector of the regional Emergency Situations Ministry, Grigory Terentyev, to 8 1/2 years in prison in the high-profile case.
The two men were found guilty of embezzlement, fraud, and negligence.
The court ordered that they pay hefty fines and be deprived of the right to hold state positions for two years after serving their terms.
"It was the one in a series of disasters caused by or exacerbated by the corrosively deadly effects of negligence, carelessness, corruption, corner-cutting, and crumbling infrastructure among officials," the court said.
The fire that completely destroyed the Zimnyaya Vishnya (Winter Cherry) mall in Kemerovo in March 2018 was one of the deadliest in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
SEE ALSO: Russian Officials Impugn Motives Of Kemerovo ProtestersResidents, relatives of the victims, and Russians nationwide blamed corruption and government negligence for the high number of casualties.
Days after the fire, investigators said that blocked fire exits, an alarm system that was turned off, and "glaring violations" of safety rules before the blaze started led to the high death toll.
The former director-general and co-owner of the shopping mall, Vyacheslav Vishnevsky, was sentenced in October to eight years in prison after he pleaded guilty to bribing the former director of the regional construction control agency, Tanzilya Komkova, to obtain permission to renovate the building of a factory in the city and turn it into the mall.
Komkova was sentenced to 18 years in prison on a charge of bribe-taking in December 2021. 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 years and 14 years on charges of violating fire safety rules and negligence that led to loss of human lives.
A total of 16 people have been charged with crimes that investigators say led to or aggravated the tragedy.