Khabarovsk “competitor of Navalny” received a long prison sentence
Former governor of the Khabarovsk Territory Sergei Furgal was sentenced today to 22 years in a maximum security colony.
This verdict was rendered by the Moscow Regional Court. He satisfied the prosecutor's request. Previously, Furgal’s case was heard by a jury and unanimously found him guilty of contract killings.
All three crimes for which the ex-governor was tried, according to investigators, are related to the business of collecting and processing scrap metal, which Furgal was involved in in the early 2000s.
The investigation believes that Furgal and his former business partner in the scrap metal buying industry, Nikolai Mistryukov, created an organized group in 2004 to kill competitors. They were shot and blown up with grenades.
At the trial, the prosecutor stated that it was the norm for Furgal to “go to the switch,” and his main goal was to earn money at any cost. Sergei Furgal was detained on suspicion of organizing murders back in 2004.
“Your Honor, the verdict is clear. Only one thing is unclear. Shame on you? Aren’t you ashamed of this sentence?” the defendant said after the verdict was announced.
Furgal's defense intends to appeal the verdict and will seek acquittal.
The ex-governor himself connects the accusations against himself with the seizure of 100% of the shares of the Amurstal enterprise by Pavel Balsky: Furgal refused to sell him his stake.
Furgal, as a candidate from the LDPR, won the 2018 gubernatorial elections of United Russia representative Vyacheslav Shport with a margin of 40%. He was very popular in the region. After his arrest in 2020 in Khabarovsk, people went out to mass protests for almost a year.
Therefore, political scientists are discussing not so much the circumstances of the ex-governor’s criminal case as the political consequences of the verdict.
“Furgal was actually the leader of the mafia many years ago. But he was the governor of the Khabarovsk Territory. How is this possible? But in the 90s it was impossible to engage in big business and not be associated with crime. Why do the residents of the Khabarovsk Territory support him so much? Because Furgal is a bandit for them, but one of his own. He did not allow Moscow businesses and officials, who are hated there, to take over everything in their region. And the fact that Furgal is a bandit, in the opinion of residents, is not his fault, but Moscow, which has established such a system that you cannot do business without breaking the law,” wrote political scientist Sergei Markov in his TG channel.
His colleague from Volgograd, Alexander Saigin, considers Furgal “a tragic figure who demonstrated that only conditional liberals and conditional patriots can exist on the political field.”
“Neither one nor the other chose to pay attention to him. Well, yes, this is not Navalny. Furgal was imprisoned not for contract killings, but for political ambitions. And his ambitions were higher than to become the leader of the party. Much higher. They noticed this and decided to nip it in the bud. I don’t want to think what kind of president he could have made, but he was able to add spice and dynamics to the political process,” Saigin wrote.
However, liberal writer Anatoly Nesmiyan believes that Furgal should not be discounted. He can become the leader of the mythical “beautiful Russia of the future” instead of the criminal blogger Alexei Navalny.
“After we suffer a heavy loss, Furgal will become one of the first candidates to be released from prison, and even in the aura of a martyr. And its undoubted advantage will be its systemic status, which cannot be canceled by any sentence. Unlike, for example, Navalny, who remains a nobody for the system. And even when he is released (and there is no doubt that he will serve strictly until the mournful date), his chances will be vanishingly small. But with Furgal, who knows,” Nesmiyan wrote.
Political scientist Ilya Ananyev agrees with him.
“The ex-governor of the Khabarovsk Territory will definitely sit out the special operation and its completion, and will be able to monitor the transfer of the Russian president, a possible change in political regimes and Russia’s views on the world. It is obvious that the “elite” itself is transforming, having made efforts for the “social elevator” into the prison of an effective governor. There is no need to give up on the “thaw” for Furgal, nor on his political future,” he wrote.
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