MOSCOW – The Russian prosecution has said the Ukrainian Library Director Natalia Sharina, who is accused of extremism and embezzlement, inflicted damage in the amount of about 3.5 million rubles.
“Owing to the position held, Sharina in violation of law organized obtaining of the payment orders from a settlement account of the Department of Finance for Moscow to a settlement account of the Moscow City Bar Association in a total amount of 297,000 rubles. Thus, she inflicted damage in the aforementioned amount,” a representative of the prosecutor’s office said at Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court on Wednesday.
According to the case files, in addition to that, Sharina committed embezzlement in the amount of 3.2 million rubles by getting jobs for the acquaintances of her lawyer, transferring salary to them and providing them health insurance. The money was transferred from a settlement account of Department of Finance for Moscow.
The state prosecutor also said that Sharina’s actions had a deliberate nature and were aimed at incitement of hatred on the ethnic grounds.
“Sharina acted intentionally for the purpose of incitement of ethnic hatred and enmity and violation of human dignity. She had bought [the books] from an unidentified individual and, knowing full that the library is a public one in accordance with the law, placed the books of Dmytro Korchynsky in the library while being in the library at unidentified time,” the state prosecutor also said.
The state prosecutor said that the defendant had bought the books related to the Ukrainian nationalism, such as ‘Kyiv’, ‘War in the Crowd’, ‘Kyiv – New York and others, as well as a booklet on Roman Shukhevych, former the Ukrainian Insurgent Army [an organization banned in Russia]. According to an expert evaluation, these books include derogatory characteristics inciting the actions against the ethic group of Russians.
The law enforcement structures conducted searches at the Ukrainian Literature Library on Oct. 28, 2015, following which the library’s director Sharina was detained. A criminal case under Article ‘Incitement of ethnic hatred and enmity and violation of human dignity’ of the Russian Criminal Code was opened against her.
The case was opened on the grounds of the fact that the library offered visitors the works by Korchynsky, which were qualified as extremist materials by a Russian court and banned from use, the Russian Investigative Committee said.
The materials of the case against Sharina were later handed over to the high-priority cases investigation department of the Main Directorate of the Russian Investigative Committee for Moscow.
Sharina remains under house arrest since Oct. 2015.
Sharina was charged on another count, of embezzlement, on April 5. According to the investigation, Sharina spent the funds intended for salaries of the library’s lawyers on her defense in the first criminal case of extremism, which was subsequently closed, in 2011-2013.
The defendant has refuted all the accusations.
“I do not understand the accusation and plead not guilty,” Sharina said at court after a prosecutor stated their charges.
