One of Russia ’s richest politicians has avoided jail after shooting dead a constituent who he allegedly “mistook for a bear”.
Pro-Putin regional MP and fish tycoon Igor Redkin, 56, shot married father-of-one Andrey Tolstopyatov, 30, who died soon after identifying Redkin as the shooter.
Redkin has insisted to officers that he had aimed at a brown bear scavenging at a rubbish dump.
Footage shows pro-Putin regional MP and fish tycoon Igor Redkin, 56, demonstrating to murder detectives how he fired the fatal shot from a hatch in his all terrain vehicle.
Explaining his shot, the politician - now axed by United Russian party and no longer an MP after the scandal - is seen on video saying: “I open the hatch, stand here, turn on the thermal imager and look through it.
“What's there? I saw a bear. The gun is ready for shooting with a thermal imager…
“I took aim, and hit the bear with the first shot.”
At the time, the victim was at a rubbish dump gathering scrap metal in Ozernovsky village in the Russian Far East.
He was struck in the abdomen by a bullet from Redkin’s elite £30,000 hunting rifle.
Confessing to the shooting a year ago, the fish tycoon said: “I heard that a bear, from which local residents might suffer, was wandering in the rubbish dump.
“I took the weapon and decided to scare the bear away.”
He had “unwittingly” killed the man in an “unintentional” act as he tried to protect his constituents from roaming bears, he claimed.
Originally he was with “premeditated murder”, with a penalty of a maximum 15 years in jail if convicted.
However this charge was downgraded to causing death by negligence.
Allegations he was “drunk” at the time of the shooting were not proven.
He was instead handed a non-custodial sentence by which he must live in his district and report to officials once a month.
This came after he paid a total of £410,000 to the wife and mother of the killed man who had been collecting scrap metal when he was shot..
The victim’s wife Lyudmila, 27, said Tolstopyatov had been a loving father and “beacon of light” to his child and stepchild.
But she made clear to the court that after the compensation agreement, she had no further claims against Redkin.
The judge said the tycoon - who has fish and tourism interests in Kamchatka region on Russia ’s Pacific coast - had admitted his guilt and shown remorse.
“The court took into account…his active assistance in solving and investigating the crime…and moral damages paid to the victims,” said the judge.
His lawyer Olga Struchenko said the then MP had scared away two bears and the fatal incident happened when he “saw a third”.
"He was sure that he was shooting a bear, there were no people in sight,” she said.
“It was only later that he found out that a man had been shot.”
Redkin in 2021 was ranked 20th in the Forbes list of Russia’s wealthiest public officials and politicians.
