A senior prison official has been dismissed from a penal colony that Russia’s penitentiary system admitted used slave labor, five years after the accusations were floated by a member of the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot. Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was sent to a penal colony in the remote Siberian region of Mordovia for her participation in the band's anti-Putin "punk prayer" in February 2012. In 2013, Tolokonnikova alleged that she and her fellow inmates were treated as slaves and that its then-deputy warden, Yury Kupriyanov, had threatened to kill her. “It looks like Tolokonnikova was right,” the deputy chief of the Federal Prison Service, Valery Maximenko, told the state-run TASS news agency Monday.

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In comments to TASS, Maximenko accused Penal Colony No. 14’s chief warden Kupriyanov of “stuffing his pockets at the expense of the convicted women.” A secret on-site inspection had uncovered that the women were “engaged in tailoring from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m., performing under-the-counter orders,” Maximenko said. He added that Kupriyanov has been dismissed alongside other officials suspected of using prisoners’ labor. “The issue of bringing a criminal case will be decided [later],” Maximenko was cited by TASS as saying, noting that all case materials have been forwarded to the Investigative Committee. “I hope this serves as a warning to everyone.”