CHECHNYA LINKS LIBRARY

Alkhanov: About 1000 residents of Chechnya have made illegal attempts to obtain compensation

By Lecha Sadayev

CHECHNYA - About 1000 people have attempted to obtain financial compensation for destroyed dwellings and lost personal belongings illegally, on false documents, the Moscow-backed Chechen President Alu Alkhanov told journalists in Grozny’s Government House on September 28.

Alkhanov referred to information from a special commission headed by First Vice-Premier Ramzan Kadyrov that checked the documents submitted by the Chechen applicants. He made his statement a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin in his televised call-in show pledged "to talk once again with Alkhanov and responsible bodies in Moscow" about the compensation irregularities. The payment of financial compensation has been stopped in Chechnya since the beginning of the current year.

Since the payments were begun two years ago, more than 39000 families in Chechnya have received them. However, among these families there are numerous people whose dwellings have not been destroyed. The law-enforcement agencies have opened dozens of criminal cases in relation to the fraudsters. Nevertheless, shady transactions in this sphere continue.

Alkhanov says that some show trials of individuals who have used official positions or false documents in order to appropriate other people’s money need to be held.

According to information supplied by a source in the Chechen government, the number of citizens who have submitted documents in order to obtain compensation is in excess of 140,000.

(MD/T)