16:38, 11 October 2016

Savva reports receipt refugee status

Ukraine and the United States have granted the refugee status to Mikhail Savva, a Professor of the Kuban State University (KSU) and Director of Grant Programmes of the Southern Regional Resource Centre (SRRC), convicted of a fraud. This was announced by Mr Savva himself.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on April 2, 2014, Mikhail Savva was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of having embezzled the budget funds allocated as a grant by the administration of the Krasnodar Territory, as well as of receiving payments for fictitious lessons conducted at the KSU. The Professor had flatly refused to plead guilty. The verdict was challenged; however, the Court of Appeal left it unchanged.

On February 19 this year, Mikhail Savva announced that he was abroad, and that he had left Russia for fear of being brought to criminal responsibility within a new case.

On April 20, it became known that a new criminal case had been initiated against Mikhail Savva. It originates from the case against the information training centre "Levados", which was originally opened against Elena Shablo, its Director.

"Ukraine has granted me the refugee status," the "Interfax" quotes Mikhail Savva as saying today.

Mr Savva has added that earlier the US authorities had also granted him the refugee status. "The United States have also approved my refugee status, but I didn't want to move there – I didn't want to start my life anew once again," he wrote on his page in the Facebook social network.

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