Prosecutor says police fail to fight poaching in Far East

A top Russian prosecutor blamed Far Eastern law enforcers for failing to fight poaching in the region, Itar-Tass reports. Russian Deputy Prosecutor General in the Far Eastern federal district Yuri Gulyagin said the work to protect marine biological resources was inefficient. Poaching and smuggling of marine resources “comprise the most widely spread violations, which form the economic basis of organized crime in the Far East,” he said at a conference in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski on Thursday. Gulyagin said the number of instituted criminal cases did not reflect the true corruption scope and work to expose organized criminal communities was insufficient. “Additional measures are necessary to improve the activities of law enforcing and controlling bodies, as well as the normative and legal base,” the prosecutor said.

The poaching situation will again be discussed in the third quarter of the year in Moscow at a meeting chaired by Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, the office of the Kamchatka prosecutor told Tass.