A Fontanka journalist complains that he was not allowed to photograph the luxurious mansion of the governor of the Angara region.
Unknown “strong guys” and police officers prohibited Fontanka journalist Mikhail Grachev from filming from the air the alleged mansion of the acting head of the Irkutsk region, Igor Kobzev.
Grachev himself spoke about this on your blog.
The journalist claims that on the eve of the local elections he was in his native region on other business and decided to simultaneously film a story for his video blog. Having dug into the local agenda, he saw that Kobzev could hide the fact that he owned an elite mansion in the picturesque cottage village of Khoromy. About it previously wrote in local telegram channels and media.
A copy of the rental agreement was published in the Babr community, where, as writes the resource "Taiga.info" it was indicated that Kobzev rented two neighboring plots in the village of Novolisikha, Irkutsk region, with a total area of 0,36 hectares. On one of them there is a house measuring 400 square meters. meters, a bathhouse of 80 square meters, a garage for two cars and a “staff accommodation”, which turned out to be four times smaller than the bathhouse.
Journalist Grachev in his blog told the details of how the security forces thwarted his investigation by detaining him in the village.
“According to my information, here local construction oligarchs rented (or maybe bought) luxury housing for the family of the acting governor of the Irkutsk region - a house worth 95 million rubles... I decided: I need to find this house, make an extract from Rosreestr, look at who it is registered under house. There is no exact address, the territory of the village is closed, but there are photos from the site.
I thought: I’ll fly over the village, from the distinctive features of the territory I’ll understand where exactly the house is located and make an extract. I found a guy with a copter in Irkutsk and came to the place. Not even a minute had passed since take-off when a guy flies up to me and starts asking about permission to take off and in general, what are we filming here and so on. Then he unexpectedly declares that he is a “law-conscious citizen and patriot” and it seems to him that we are doing something illegal. And his face looks as if he spent 5 years in prison.
We didn’t show off, we lowered the copter, after which the man seemed to leave. We got into our cars, set off, and then an old broken-down Toyota suddenly blocked our road, from where two more strong guys climbed out with this guy. They run up to us with their phones and one of them begins to accuse us that we are “filming an article to denigrate the acting governor,” that we were paid either by the candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Shchapov, or by the candidate from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Shchadov,” writes Grachev.
Next, the parties called the police and began to wait for the arrival of law enforcement officers, who forbade Grachev to film from a drone.
“Another 30 minutes later the police arrived. First two, then a captain, then a whole lieutenant colonel. They questioned us, but they couldn’t say what exactly we had violated. And they asked me first. To all questions they said: a phone call came in that a copter was flying. No one could say what exactly the violation was. Only the lieutenant colonel explained: you see, we have elections here, so we carefully process such requests. Not a verbatim quote, but somewhere not far away.
“This concerns not only the acting governor, but also other candidates,” he smiled at the end of the conversation. During the two-hour conversation, it became clear that we had not violated anything. Therefore, the owner of the copter and I were placed under a camera, after which the police captain confusedly explained to us that if we take off again, we would be violating 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation “Disobedience to a lawful demand of a police officer.” That is, the local police prohibited filming the supposed house of Acting Governor Kobzev. It seems to me that this means that they simply could not find violations in our actions. At least at the scene."
Previously, Russian political scientist Oleg Bondarenko announced a serious fight, which the Communist Party of the Russian Federation intends to give to the ruling United Russia party in the fight for its base “red region” - the Irkutsk region, which until recently was headed by communist governor Sergei Levchenko, who resigned after the emergency with last year’s large-scale flood. According to Bondarenko, the new candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation for Irkutsk governor will be 44-year-old State Duma deputy Mikhail Shchapov.
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