Karina Tsurkan
- Criminal Code
- Article 276, Russian Criminal Code
- Verdict
- Imprisonment (general regime)
- Sentence
- 15 years
- Date of verdict
- 2020-12-28
- Region
- Moscow
- City
- Moscow
- Facility
- ФКУ «ИК № 1 УФСИН по Владимирской области»
- Address for letters
- 601395, Владимирская область, Судогодский р- н, посёлок Головино, ул. Советская д. 50-А, ФКУ «ИК № 1 УФСИН по Владимирской области», Цуркан Карина Валерьевна, 1974 г.р.
Recognition by human rights organisations
- Recognised as a political prisonerby Memorial Human Rights Centre, 24 November 2021
This is the assessment of the organisation named above, not ours. FACTUM reports it with attribution and does not make its own.
Case summary
Tsurkan lived in Moldova until 2007, then moved to Moscow and renounced her Moldovan citizenship in favour of Russian citizenship. Tsurkan was a member of the management board of the public joint-stock company Inter RAO. Tsurkan was detained on 14 June 2018. The next day, the court sent her to custody in the case of espionage in favour of Moldova - according to the investigation, Tsurkan had carried out espionage while still being a citizen of that country. On 28 June, Inter RAO's board of directors decided to expel her from the management board. On 16 January 2020, Tsurkan was issued a preventive measure in the form of a ban on certain actions, but on 7 February she was placed in custody again. On 29 December 2020, Tsurkan was sentenced to 15 years in a general regime colony.
Human rights activists consider the charges to be unproven and the case itself to be a part of the large spy-seeking campaign, as well as a consequence of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
Others charged under Article 276, Russian Criminal Code
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Source: this person’s record in the OVD-Info political persecution database
Published under CC BY 3.0. The criteria for treating a person as politically persecuted belong to OVD-Info; FACTUM relays their assessment and makes none of its own.
OVD-Info has been designated an «extremist» organisation in Russia — by decision of the Russian authorities, like other independent human rights and media projects.