Gang Victims to Get Help

By Irina Titova

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: August 22, 2012 (Issue # 1723)

Three lawyers from St. Petersburg and Moscow have offered to provide their services for free to victims and relatives of those affected by crimes committed by Sergei Tsapok’s gang. The criminal gang was active in Russia’s Krasnodar region in the village of Kuschyovskaya between 1998 and 2010.

Moscow lawyer Yekaterina Romanova told reporters that she and two other lawyers from St. Petersburg had answered the victims’ request for legal help, Interfax reported.

“Until now the victims did not have any legal defense. They didn’t have a real lawyer or legal help. They did not understand if their rights were being violated or not and what rights they had,” Romanova said.

Romanova said that due to reasons that “everyone understands,” local lawyers in the Krasnodar region did not want to take part in the case involving the Kuschyovskaya gang.

“The Krasnodar region is probably not a safe area for the legal defense of victims in the Tsapok case,” Romanova said.

Romanova said the defense would ask the court to give it time to study the 478 volumes of the case.

The lawyers have agreed to do the work for free because they believe that “the victims and families affected by such an outrageous case should not be left without help,” she said.

Romanova said she knows the victims and has visited Kuschyovskaya.

The case involves about 30 victims.

The gang was active in the village between 1998 and 2010. Members of the criminal group reportedly killed at least 19 people, including children.

Six people have been accused of committing the crimes, including the alleged leader of the group, Sergei Tsapok, a businessman and an ex-deputy of the district council. He is accused of multiples crimes, including 18 murders.

Tsapok and the others have been accused of murder, attempted murder, false imprisonment, rape, robbery, illegal possession of firearms and participating in a gang. The maximum sentence they face is life in prison.

The investigation found that members of Tsapok’s gang murdered 12 people, including three young children, in a farmer’s house on Nov. 4, 2010. Soon afterwards, the members of the gang were detained and police were able to link them to a number of serious crimes the gang had reportedly committed earlier.