Odessa: Vadim Cherny will sit
You know, young man, for the first time in many years I still agree with the decision of our guardians of the law. Today, the Kiev District Court of Odessa announced a verdict according to which local businessman Vadim Cherny, accused of the death of nine people during the fire of his Tokyo Star Hotel, will spend the next 60 days in a pre-trial detention center without the right to bail. How did it happen?
...You already know about the tragedy that we described the other day. People who were in cells without windows and natural ventilation, in fact, became victims of a monstrous and long-term violation of all possible and impossible norms and rules... But, despite the egregious nature of the incident, the owner of the establishment, which was a place of permanent risk for the guests, fought off Themis with all his limbs .
What did he not do yesterday and today at the court hearing that determined the preventive measure for him! He demanded the recusal of the judge - they say, he once wrote on my website, accusing the police of torture and pressure, wanted to change the place of consideration of the case, and at the same time change the team of prosecutors dealing with it... And even - as “heavy artillery” - attracted his spiritual mentor, “Chief Rabbi of Odessa and the South of Ukraine” Abraham Wolf, to the meeting room, who wished to bail out a worthy person whom he knows only on the good side...
Indeed, the latter (as well as many of my fellow Jews!) made me quite sad. After all, the intervention of a clergyman in an obviously criminal case directly contradicts both the idea of Ukraine as a secular state and the elementary morality that separates religion and nationality from judicial and investigative practice. And if we take into account that Rabbi Wolf is a citizen of Israel, indeed, the actions of the head of the local Hasidic community “Chabad” look strange and are outside the legal field, rather playing into the hands of anti-Semites.
Really, all this looked like a deliberate delay in making the only correct decision by the court in the flimsy hope that external forces like “God ex machina” would help the rogue avoid the long-deserved zugunder. But, obviously, for the Prime Minister of Israel, who was visiting our country, this story did not become a reason to get involved in another scandal. Moreover, it is completely obscene.
And I am silently silent about those helpless arguments that Cherny tried to bring in his defense - in the style of saying that, they say, I am the owner of only the first floor, and the fire started on the second, which has a different owner! This is in a hotel that functioned as a single economic and administrative whole! From the same area and his lamentation on the subject - well, here is everything that’s mine, acquired through backbreaking labor, where can I run away, let me go home, boss citizens!
But the main argument for recognizing at the initial stage the suspicions brought against Vadim Cherny by the prosecutor’s office and the investigation as weighty was an absolutely blatant fact. The fact that his “hotel” is an anthill of cages into which a former tram hangar was divided, was listed in all documents as storage premises for more than TEN YEARS! That is, we are talking about malicious misuse of the building, which ultimately resulted in human casualties. And who should be responsible for this if not its owner, who is also the head of the company involved in its operation?!
And here is the time to ask: - what about the fact that the neighboring places in the dock next to Mr. Cherny are occupied by those officials who gave permission for the clearly unlawful transformation of the tram depot building into a “warehouse”, and - all these years “did not notice “actually an illegal hotel-brothel, advertising of which was displayed all over the city! As they say, we are waiting for the logically and legally logical continuation of the “banquet of justice.” It’s only a pity that it started so late, after the death of innocent people who became victims of their gullibility and greed, and the negligence of businessmen and bureaucrats.
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