"No doubt some of the suspects won't be acquitted" - lawyer Aleksandr Fomenko

The owners of the ill-fated club might have bribed local authorities to get permits to run it.

According to lawyer Aleksandr Fomenko, Perm city administration may also bear the blame for not ensuring safety standards were maintained at the nightclub, which caught fire due to negligence, killing 112 and injuring 120 people in Russia’s Urals.

“People will demand that the authorities who issued the permits for this club are punished,” he says, “And of course the whole corrupted system has to be changed.”