A former minister who was disqualified over the garbage collapse has been appointed mayor of Yakutsk.

After in Yakutsk Direct elections of the mayor were cancelled, and the city council members appointed him to this position Dmitry Sadovnikov — he was nominated by the head of the republic Aisen Nikolaev.

Sadovnikov has been in government service since 2003. For the past five years, he served as First Deputy Chairman of the regional government. Before that, he headed the Ministry of Housing and Public Utilities.

How to clarifies According to the Siberian Express newspaper, in 2019, the city court found Sadovnikov guilty of failing to comply with the prosecutor's orders and disqualified him for seven months, barring him from holding the ministerial position. Specifically, the prosecutor's office alleged that the official was turning a blind eye to the waste management company's inaction and failing to respond to official demands for oversight.

Curiously, after the court upheld the claims and dismissed the official, the prosecutor's office suddenly requested a mitigation of the sentence and a fine. Some time later, it proposed dismissing the administrative case entirely due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. However, by that time, Sadovnikov had been convicted of new violations related to the provision of budget compensation for coal (this case was also subsequently dismissed).

Photo: Andrey Sorokin