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Gennady Nikolaevich Zherebkin, 1967-2012
The Traccc staff mourns the untimely death of our Russian friend and colleague Gennady Nikolaevich Zherebkin, 1967-2012. As a result of a rapidly developing illness, he died on March 24, in his home city ofVladivostok,Russia.
In January of 2010, TraCCC scholar, Sally Stoecker, traveled toVladivostokto hire a Russian expert on environmental crime for a project on the Russian Far East funded by the State Department. Before heading toVladivostok, she read an impressive article about trends in environmental crime in all districts of Primorksii Krai. She found and met with that author—Gennady Zherebkin– and the rest is history. He wrote a training manual for law enforcement published in 2011 on illegal logging that was so well received that it got the attention of legislators inMoscow. He was invited toMoscowto discuss improving the legislation on illegal logging the same week that he fell ill and was unable to attend.
In May of 2010, Gennady came to theUnited Statesfor the first time with one of TraCCC’s “Open World” exchanges. The topic was environmental crime and the program included meetings with numerous government agencies and NGOs. Gennady befriended many people on the trip and Rocky Piaggione of DOJ was so impressed with him that he subsequently invited him to participate in other conferences on the Lacy Act and illegal logging inRussia.
Gennady retired in 2008 from the Procuracy of Primorskii Krai, having served as prosecutor of nature protection crimes for eight years. Then he continued his care for the environment, joining the Amur branch of the World Wildlife Fund as the coordinator for legal support of projects. His judicial expertise in the area of nature protection legislation and prosecution was invaluable in court and raised the proceedings to new levels of professionalism. Few criminals escaped without punishment on his watch.
Gennady often said, “Severity is not the issue, but the inevitability of punishment for committing a crime. The use of this principle justice depends directly and reduces the number of crimes, including those against nature. Criminals should know that sooner or later they will be punished for their criminal conduct.”
He will be sorely missed by all who knew him. A kind, talented, generous, honest and simply outstanding human being. I for one am a better person for having known him.