ST. PETERSBURG, December 20 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov) – Jury selection process has been started in a criminal case against ex-deputy chief of the Federal Penitentiary Service’s (FSIN) St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region directorate Sergey Moiseyenko, who stands charged with organization of assassination against his subordinate, RAPSI reports from the courtroom on Thursday.

The case is reconsidered by the Leningrad Regional Court.

In early November, the Supreme Court of Russia overturned an earlier acquittal of Moiseyenko by jurors and sent the case back to a first-instance court for retrial.

Yet another defendant in the case is Igor Zakharov, who stands charged with ammunition trafficking. According to investigators, Zakharov has supplied a pistol for committing the murder. 

According to investigators, Colonel Nikolay Chernov, the head of the technical supervision department for the FSIN’s St. Petersburg Directorate, was murdered in order to hide corruption crimes that took place during construction of a new detention center in the region.

Investigators believe that in late 2016 Moiseyenko asked Sabir Sadykov to kill Chernov, after the latter began to counteract corruption plans of the then penitentiary offical. In turn, Sadykov received a gun and ammunition from another defendant Igor Zakharov.

The case documents read that in March 2017 Sadykov appointed a meeting with Chernov on a highway. On March 2, 2017, the defendant allegedly shot the victim, who died in a hospital on March 7.

Sadykov was sentenced to 9 years in a penal colony; he is the main witness in the Moiseyenko and Zakharov case.