According to the prosecutor’s office, Yarantsev violated federal legislation when he last winter concluded an agreement with a local heating provider. The financial part of the agreement was not in order and the mayor singlehandedly signed the deal, MBnews.ru reports.
The charges could mean serious trouble for Yarantsev, who started his political career in 2009 with winning the local elections in Teriberka.
Yarantsev, a former trawler captain and communist, surprised everyone when won the Teriberka elections. Until then, Yarantsev was more known for his wild escape from the Norwegian Coast guard in 2005. With his trawler “Elektron”, Yarantsev and his crew miraculously managed to run away from Norwegian coast guard vessels after having been detained for illegal fishing near Svalbard.
He has since ruled the strategic small fishing village locate about 100 km northeast of Murmansk. In few years time, Gazprom and its partners in the Shtokman Development AG will make the village the main base for the huge Shtokman project.
Yarantsev, never afraid of speaking out on sensitive issues, in a newspaper interview earlier this year expressed strong skepticism with the Shtokman project.
- I do not believe in Shtokman anymore. I heard talk about it back in the 1980s. It did not happen then, and it is even less likely to happen now, Yarantsev said in an interview with Reuters. -You can throw billions at it (Shtokman), but it will not work, he added.
