The chief editor of the newspaper "Kvartal" Elena Kuznetsova aquitted

The Appeals Board of the North Kazakhstan Regional Court reverse  on appeal the judgement of Petropavlovsk City Court, ruling that the chief editor of the Kvartal newspaper, Elena Kuznetsova, was prosecuted under article 130 part 3 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan (“Slander”).

Judges Lyubov Trigub, Yuliya Ivanova and Aliya Aysina considered that the private prosecutor was unable to provide evidence of Kuznetsova’s deliberate dissemination of false information.The decision of the board also states that the court of first instance did not comply with the requirements of Article 24 of the Code of Criminal Procedure on comprehensive, full and objective consideration of the case, and did not fully investigate all the evidence in the case.

As it was reported that the Russian entrepreneur Herman Mazur and his partner Olesya Datsko filed complaints with a private prosecution. The reason was the articles by Elena Kuznetsova  “Confession of a Russian Investor” (November 8, 2018), “Denouncement of a Russian Investor” (November 15, 2018) and “Gray schemes of the Russian investor” (November 22, 2018). They stated that the said articles contain statements of committing frauds and other criminal acts that were not yet confirmed by the verdict. The articles tell about the property conflict between two economic entities. In her first article, Confessions of a Russian Investor, Kuznetsova outlined the essence of the conflict from the point of view of the entrepreneur Herman Mazur, and then presented the point of view of his opponents, the management of Abi Zher LLP.

On March 16, Judge of the Petropavlovsk City Court Saule Litfullina sentenced Elena Kuznetsova to a year of restriction of freedom. On June 18, the appeals instance aquitted the journalist.