Confession follows execution

Press, 24 October 1984, Page 21

Confession follows execution

NZPA-Reuter Moscow Moscow shopworkers have been lining up to confess crimes of bribe-taking after the execution of a senior store director on charges of corruption, a city newspaper has reported. The daily “Moskovskaya Pravda” said that assistants and managers from some of the biggest food outlets had turned up at police stations in recent weeks to admit complicity in black market swindles and hand over the money they had made. The deputy chief prosecutor, Boris Namyestnikov, told the newspaper that the wave of confessions had resulted from fear of dire punishment after the execution of Yuri Sokolov, manager of Moscow’s prestigious “Gastronom Number One” last July. Sokolov was convicted of making a fortune from selling scarce and expensive foodstuffs on the black market. Mr Namyestnikov encouraged other shop staff to join the line of penitents, saying the courts would be lenient to all who gave full confessions and made good the damage they had done. The newspaper cited the case of a deputy manager, Tamara Tokmakova, who went to the police in spite of threats of violence from her colleagues and handed over 10,000 roubles (523,200) she said she had made through years of bribetaking.