Sergey Nikiforov is an Evenk indigenous community leader and environmental rights defender in Ivanovskoye village in the Amur region of Russia. On 29 September 2015, Sergey Nikiforov was sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of 16 million roubles (£152,000) for “bribery and fraud” by a court in Blagoveshchensk, Amur region. On 8 December 2015, the sentence was reduced on appeal to 4 years and the fine was reduced to 3 million roubles (£28,000). The charges relate to a building project that he commissioned in 2012 from the engineering company “DalTeploEnergo”. The activists and villagers claim that the true reason for his imprisonment is the fact that he had led his village’s protests against UK-based gold mining company "Petropavlovsk", which reportedly intends to extract ore from Evenk ancestral territories.