The business community came to the defense of Alexander Kim, who is being held in a pretrial detention center.

“We, businessmen in essence and spirit, openly express our support for our colleague, comrade, friend. “This letter is a sign of solidarity from the business community and a collective request to the court: to carefully examine the defense evidence and remove Alexander from charges of something he did not commit,” the collective appeal states.

Alexander Kim is charged under part 3 of art. 238 of the Penal Code (improper provision of services). He is also accused of prior conspiracy with the organizers of the excursion, which ended in the tragic death of eight people.

On August 20, a group of eight people took a tour of the Moscow underground. They found this offer on the Sputnik8 service. As the group descended underground, a heavy downpour began outside. As a result, closed sewers flooded with water and people trapped in them drowned.

In this case, law enforcement officers also arrested the organizer of the march, Nikita Dubas. She faces the same charges as Alexander Kim.

As the businessman’s representative told RB RU, the investigation “essentially considers Kim as a co-organizer of the 17.5 thousand excursions published on the Sputnik platform.”

The defense itself refers to the fact that, according to the offer (clause 6) published on the Sputnik8 website, the responsibility for the quality and security of the routes lies with its compilers.

In October, a Moscow court decided to extend the businessman’s arrest until January 21. The defense stated that this is “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.” .

Now, people close to the businessman point out that he should not be held responsible for the dishonest performance of his duties by third parties. The authors of the appeal recalled that Kim faces up to 10 years in prison and ask the court to study all the arguments and evidence as carefully as possible.

In early August, his partner Alexander Golovaty wrote a letter in defense of the businessman. He was then 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.