Russia’s Investigative Committee has initiated a criminal negligence investigation against government officials in the Irkutsk region. By early July, flooding in the Siberian federal subject had displaced 38,000 people from their homes, killed 25, and left 7 missing.

The case became public after Alexander Bastrykin, the chair of the Investigative Committee, decided to transfer it to the Committee’s federal center during a conference session in Bratsk.

Physicists and meteorologists from Irkutsk State University found during the flood that “observed global and regional ” was at the root of excessive rainfall that caused rivers in the Irkutsk region to overflow their banks.