Illegal bear hunting caused damage exceeding 50 thousand rubles: Beshenkovichi District Prosecutor's Office sent criminal case to court.

The Prosecutor of Beshenkovichi District sent a criminal case to court against a 29-year-old resident of Vitebsk, accused of illegal hunting and harvesting of a brown bear, listed in the Red Book of the Republic of Belarus, which caused environmental damage on a particularly large scale.

According to the case materials, in May of this year, near the village of Vysokaya Gora, Beshenkovichi District, Vitebsk Region, the accused hunted a wild animal belonging to a species listed in the Red Book of the Republic of Belarus and not considered a game animal, without proper authorization.

He fired a shot from a registered carbine with a thermal imaging sight at a brown bear, which he knew was listed as a rare and endangered species of wild animal in the Republic of Belarus.

The dead brown bear was found by local residents not far from the hunting site.

The environmental damage amounted to 1,200 basic units (50.4 thousand rubles) – during the preliminary investigation, the hunter compensated 8 thousand rubles of this amount.

The criminal case was handled by the Beshenkovichi District Department of the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Belarus.

After reviewing the criminal case materials, the district prosecutor's office concluded that the charges were substantiated and the circumstances of the crime were objectively investigated. They agreed with the qualification of the actions under Part 4 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus. When sending the criminal case to court, the district prosecutor filed a claim against the accused for the recovery of the uncompensated damage in the amount of 42.4 thousand rubles and the cost of the illegally harvested bear in the amount of 1.68 thousand rubles in the interests of the state.

The prosecutor left the previously chosen preventive measure against the accused in the form of bail unchanged when sending the case to court.

The hunter faces up to 6 years of imprisonment with a fine of up to 1000 basic units.

Prosecutor of Beshenkovichi District

Justice Counselor S.A. Urbanovich