Firefighters in the Amur region have recently become suspect of arson. An anonymous informant sent a complaint to the presidential administration website, claiming that firefighters allegedly tried so get bonuses for putting out the fire. A criminal case has been opened. The "Amur airbase" argue that the charges against their employees are "nonsense."

The Interior Ministry of Russia's Amur region in the Skovorodinsky district began criminal proceedings for the crime under Part 4 of Art. 261 of the Criminal Code (destruction or damage of forest plantations), its website reported on Monday.

The investigators suggest that the employees of the "Amur airbase" company , instead of putting out fires, have on the contrary set fire to the forest, and then quickly extinguished what they had set, hoping for a cash prize for operational work.

The Investigative Committee of the Amur region has begun pre-investigation checks which were prompted by an appeal from an Amur resident. According to the complaint, a fire was set in the Urushinskom forest area from the air. "According to preliminary data, the arson was carried out in May 2012. Forest was set on fire using a signal flare gun" the Interior Ministry told Gazeta.ru. "The damage from the fire is more than two million rubles," they added.

However, the employees of "Amur airbase" disagree with the prosecution. Deputy head of the company Sergey Panyukov told Gazeta.ru "That is all nonsense. They have opened a criminal case on slander, there are no facts. " Additionally Panyukov said that arson just did not make sense.

"While almost all burned region: more than a dozen fires. everyone was involved in firefighting, we were short of hands, " he explained.

Furthermore, he added that in the days of fire, he had flown by helicopter to Urushinskom area.

There are also doubts about the arial arson on the forums "Forest Forum Greenpeace Russia." In the forums people have write that these fires just make no sense. This isn't the first year that the Amur Region is the champion of Russia in the forest fire of lies (the concealment and distortion of the data on the number and area of ​​forest fires) - wrote a user under the name "Greenpeace employee." There was no reason to start extra fires: when [the Amur airbase is] hiding millions of hectares of burning forests (including those reported as extinguished), the reporting "on paper" of the fictitious extinguishment of several small fires all in the same day of detection turns out to be much easier and safer than to actually start and put out any real fire.