The verdict in the case of one of the most notorious stories about…

The verdict in the case of one of the most notorious stories, which was the first to be reported by the Cheka-OGPU, has entered into legal force. We are talking about the arrest of poachers in the Irkutsk region who shot a mother bear and three cubs in a den on the order of Rustam Tangirov, the chef of the Lesnoy restaurant, owned by Amin Agalarov and Grigory Leps. At their establishment, guests were served a special menu of bear meat.

It was possible to find out that the “customers” were the management of the Lesnoy restaurant thanks to correspondence found on the phone of one of the detainees, Nikiforov. It followed from it that paws, fat, etc. poachers smuggled them into China. And the meat of the animals is intended for the Moscow restaurant “Lesnoy”. The attackers reached an agreement with chef Tangirov and top manager of the Agalarovs’ restaurant empire, Ekaterina Chernykh.

In fact, it was a done deal. And then something strange happened. Following a call from Moscow, the case was taken away from the police who had opened it and it was closed. At the same time, that same correspondence disappeared from the materials. Only after numerous publications by the Cheka-OGPU and the resulting uproar, the decision to close the case was canceled. True, the investigation was unique.

Nikiforov, who was caught red-handed with animal meat and who delivered meat of rare animals from poachers to the customer’s representatives, was made a witness. The poachers themselves were asked during interrogations whether they knew who the meat was intended for; they answered that they did not know. And it was true. No other investigative actions were taken to identify the customer in relation to the Lesnoy restaurant. As a result, four perpetrators received suspended sentences.