MOSCOW, June 7 (RAPSI) – A court on Friday ordered the Irkutsk Region’s timber complex minister Sergey Sheverda charged with abuse of office to be put in detention for two months, the press service of the Investigative Committee’s regional directorate told journalists.

Sheverda was arrested as part of investigation initiated earlier into illegal clear sanitary felling in a state nature reserve of regional significance in the Irkutsk Region at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on June 6.

Earlier, several regional officials involved in the case were charged with abuse of power, illegal logging and disturbance of regime of specially protected natural reservations.

According to investigators, the defendants illegally ordered, agreed upon a schedule and sanitized the nature reserve. As a result of illegal logging, damage totaling to nearly 748 million rubles ($11.5 million) was caused to Russia’s Timber Fund, hunting resources and their habitat, soils and animals.