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Students Miss Exams After Lawmaker Takes Helicopter

Seventeen teenagers from two remote villages in the far eastern republic of Sakha missed their high school graduation exams last week because a State Duma deputy took their helicopter for a hunting trip, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported Friday.

Mikhail Everstov, a deputy with the ruling United Russia party, flew away with a helicopter that had been reserved for the students, Konstantin Shakhurdin, head of the Bulunsky Ulus district administration, told the government newspaper.

"I only found out when it was too late to do anything," Shakhurdin said. "Why could that servant of the people not wait one more day?"

The deputy took the helicopter on a hunting trip to the remote village of Siktyakh, Shakhurdin said.

Siktyakh is 230 kilometers away from the local administrative center, Tiksi, where the students from the villages of Taimylyr and Naiba were to be flown to take their exams. The helicopter should have flown them earlier but was held up by bad weather, the report said.

Shakhurdin said he would complain to Sakha President Vyacheslav Shtyrov.

When reached by The Moscow Times by telephone Friday, he refused to comment on the report.

Repeated calls to Everstov's Duma office went unanswered.

An unidentified aide for Everstov confirmed that the deputy was traveling on official business in northern Sakha but refused to elaborate on the purpose of the trip, the report said.

Everstov, an avid hunter, was accused of poaching in February last year, but a criminal case against him was closed, the Novy Region web site reported.

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