Witness speaks about search of Lukyanenko’s home

At a search, Ekaterina Lukyanenko, the Minister of Social Development of the Astrakhan Region, herself gave away the money; and later she felt bad and an ambulance was called to her, Vartan Simonyan, a witness, said at the court session.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Ms Lukyanenko was detained on June 6, 2015, on suspicion of taking a bribe in the amount of 260,000 roubles. According to investigators, from March 2014 to June 2015, she received over 2 million roubles from the heads of institutions subordinate to the Ministry. Ekaterina Lukyanenko refuses to plead guilty.

Today, the Privolzhskiy Court listened to the testimony of Vartan Simonyan, a senior operative agent of the Division for Combating Economic Crime (known as OBEP) of the Department of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) for the Astrakhan Region, whose interrogation was asked by the defence.

The defence was interested in the procedure of searching the Lukyanenko’s apartment, where the advocate was not admitted. At the search, Lukyanenko herself gave out the money; later, she felt bad, and he called an ambulance, Simonyan said.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.