Violations of Russia’s environmental protection laws cost the country more than $187 million in 2018, a reduction from previous years, officials from the Prosecutor General's Office said on Monday.
The 2018 figures represent a downward trend in environmental damage over the past decade, the state-run TASS news agency quoted Miroshnik as saying. Since 2009, damage from environmental violations approximately halved due to prosecutors’ efforts, he added.
“In 2018 alone, 12 billion rubles ($187 million) in damages from environmental crimes were recorded,” Prosecutor General's Office official Igor Miroshnik was quoted as telling reporters during a Russia-China roundtable in the Far East city of Khabarovsk.
The majority of violations affected the foresting industry, Miroshnik said.
Over the past year, the Prosecutor’s Office found 278,000 violations of environmental law and initiated criminal cases for 2,000 of these, TASS quoted Anatoly Palamarchuk, a senior official at the Prosecutor General’s Office, as saying.
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