“A dangerous precedent for IT projects”: businessman Kim’s defense will appeal the extension of his arrest

Earlier this week, Moscow’s Basmanny Court decided to extend the arrest of Alexander Kim until January 21 in the case of the death of eight people in one of the capital’s sewers. The same decision was made against the second defendant in the case, Nikita Dubas.

On August 20, a group of eight people took a tour of the Moscow underground. Around this time it began to rain heavily. As a result, the collector in the Trubnaya area began to flood with water and the members of the excursion group could not get out and drowned.

Alexander Kim is charged under part 3 of art. 238 of the Penal Code (improper provision of services). The businessman is also accused of prior conspiracy with the organizers of the excursion. For these charges, Kim faces up to ten years in prison. On August 23, the businessman was sent to a preventive detention center.

Now the investigation has argued the need to expand this preventive measure due to the fact that as part of the investigation, information was requested from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the hydrometeorological center and credit institutions. However, no responses have yet been received.

The defense, for its part, continues to insist on the businessman’s innocence. The lawyers point out that Kim did not know the organizer of the walks. And the fact that the responsibility for the quality and safety of the excursions lies with those responsible is indicated in the offer published on the Sputnik8 website.

“This interpretation of the incident is not only unfair, but also creates a dangerous precedent from the point of view of the development of a wide range of IT projects in Russia, which are based on the mechanics of Uberization, the exclusion of intermediaries in the client-executor chain”. Alexander Kim must be released and all charges against him dropped,” said lawyer Denis Krokhmal.

Previously, his partner Alexander Golovaty published an open letter in defense of the businessman; was supported by Penenza CEO Taisiya Kudashkina, Localrent founder Kirill Antoshin, Startup Lab managing partner Fedor Yakovlev, and Voice of the City co-founder Ilya Feyginov.