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Kirill Serebrennikov, found “guilty” but left free


“Guilty” Kirill Serebrennikov will not go to jail for embezzlement. Russian justice on Friday (June 26th) handed down a half-hearted verdict against the Russian director and director, one of the most gifted and prolific of his generation, who has spent nearly two years assigned to residency, between 2017 and 2019.

Read the story (in 2018): In Moscow, the Kafkaesque trial of director Kirill Serebrennikov

The Moscow Mechtchanski court sentenced Kirill Serebrennikov, 50, to a three-year suspended prison sentence. His three co-defendants – his assistants in the troop 7e studio and theater Center Gogol – have also received suspended sentences and fines.

Read Kirill Serebrennikov’s testimony: “I did not commit any crime”

The words of the court had however been very hard, that very morning, to say the guilt of the director and his “Accomplices”. These would have premeditated their scam, “Of a particularly large scale”, “long standing”, and would have been constituted for that in one “Very well organized criminal group”.

Sign of the relief aroused by this verdict, but also of the oddity of the situation, the decision was greeted with cries of joy and applause from the hundreds of people present in court: the prosecution had demanded, Monday, a sentence of six years firm against the main accused, and he is rarely contradicted.

Read the review: “Leto”, the rock sun in the Soviet greyness

In the crowd, singer Roma Zver, actor in the film Summer (2018), by Serebrennikov, summed up the general feeling: “We are happy to be suspended. “ Perfectly calm during the last hearing as during the three years that the procedure lasted, Kirill Serebrennikov went free, his eternal cap screwed on his head, black mask on his face, calling to continue the “Fight for the truth”. His lawyer and those of the other convicts have announced their willingness to appeal.

International mobilization

Was it popular support, admittedly modest but coupled with international mobilization, which enabled the director to escape prison? Impossible to say, especially as the Russian justice has become these last few months customary of these half-measures, in certain files perceived as sensitive.

The case is as tortuous as a Russian accounting exercise. According to the prosecution, the “Conspirators” embezzled 133 million rubles (about 1.7 million euros) of public subsidies between 2011 and 2014, as part of the Platform project, supported by the Ministry of Culture. According to justice, the number and the cost of the events organized within the framework of this project were exaggerated by means of fictitious contracts. They will also have to reimburse the sums in question.

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