Four generals were arrested in Russia in a month

Three are suspected of receiving bribes for tens of millions of rubles. Another is in fraud. Such a "cleaning" in the Ministry of Defense has not yet been

In the structures of the Russian Ministry of Defense, arrests began-in a month of three generals, including the deputy minister, they were detained on suspicion of receiving bribes, and the former commander of the 58th Army Ivan Popov-on charges of fraud. On May 12, Sergey Shoigu was removed from the post of head of the ministry, who held this position for 12 years. His place was taken by Andrei Belousov, a former Deputy Prime Minister on Economic Affairs. Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, commenting on arrests in the ministry, announced the “consistent struggle against corruption”-although before that there were no such “purges”. "Medusa" says that it is known about arrests in the Ministry of Defense.

Timur Ivanov

On April 23, Deputy Minister of Defense Timur Ivanov was detained at the workplace. Shortly before that, he took part in the College of the Ministry of Defense under the leadership of Sergei Shoigu (three weeks later, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent Shoigu). Ivanov was accused of receiving a bribe on an especially large scale (part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code). The investigation believes that the amount of a bribe is approximately 1.125 billion rubles. “According to our feelings, the root of this case lies in films about him,” said the official of the official Murad Musaev.

Ivanov is not a personnel military: at the beginning of his career, he worked in the fuel and energy sphere and in the structures of Rosatom, then in the Inter RAO UES, and at the time when Sergey Shoigu headed the Moscow Region, he was the deputy chairman of the regional government of the region for several months . The Deputy Minister of Defense Ivanov was appointed in 2016. In the department, he oversaw the construction of all major objects, including the main temple of the Armed Forces, Patriot Park and Vostochny Cosmodrome, and also was responsible for the restoration of the occupied and destroyed Mariupol.

In 2022, the FBK issued an investigation about the wife of Ivanov Svetlana, which stated that from 2010 to 2018, she and her husband went to the azure coast every year, where they rented expensive villas and yachts; They owned the 2001 Rolls-Royce Corniche car and rested with the Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov and his wife Tatyana Navka.

In addition, the investigators found a mansion in Pure Lane in the center of Moscow (the former Sophia Volkonskaya’s manor, this mansion is considered a prototype of the house from Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel “Master and Margarita”), the house in the village of Uspenskoye on Rublevsky Highway and the cottage in the Tver region on the Tver region The bank of the Volga.

In June 2022, Ivanov divorced Svetlana, and then, as the ally of Navalny found out, began to meet with former adviser Sergei Shoigu Maria Kitaeva, who had previously been married to another official of the Ministry of Defense-Colonel General Yuri Sadovienko , who headed the apparatus of the military department. Ivanov’s lawyer said that his client had a “common economy” with Kitaeva. Ivanov fell under the sanctions of the United States and the European Union, but the sanctions were not imposed against his ex -wife Svetlana.

After the arrest, Timur Ivanov was sent under arrest, and Shoigu removed him from his post. “Important stories” with reference to two sources close to the FSB, they argued that the true reason for Ivanov’s arrest was a suspicion of Gosizman, which they allegedly did not want to “talk publicly” about. This version has not yet been confirmed by other sources.

Together with Ivanov, another accused in this case was arrested - Sergey Borodin, who is also suspected of receiving a bribe. According to investigators, he was with Ivanov on friendly terms. According to the Dossier Center, Borodin "Volzhsky Coast" built the country house of Timur Ivanov in the Tver region. Investigator Sergei Yezhov calls Borodin “perennial manager” by Ivanov.

In the case of Ivanov, a bribe suspect was also arrested in giving - businessman Alexander Fomin, co -owner of Olympthistroy, who was the main developer in Mariupol. According to Kommersant, the investigation offered the businessman to be exempted from criminal liability in exchange for “active repentance”, but he refused.

On May 8, a meeting was held in the court to appeal the arrest of Ivanov, to which his lawyer brought, as RIA Novosti wrote , “four packages” with a reward of an official. The defense asked to transfer Ivanov under house arrest, but the court left Ivanov in a pre -trial detention center. Ivanov does not admit his guilt in the case of a bribe.

Yuri Kuznetsov

Three weeks later, on May 13, under the same article as Ivanov, they detained another official of the military department - the head of the Main Directorate of the personnel of the Ministry of Defense Yuri Kuznetsov. He was also accused of receiving a large -scale bribe.

The case materials relate to the period from 2021 to 2023, when Kuznetsov headed the eighth control of the General Staff. According to investigators, he received a bribe from "representatives of commercial structures." During the search in Kuznetsov’s house in the village near Moscow, as well as in the Moscow apartment and office, he found more than 100 million rubles in Russian and foreign currency, gold coins, watches and “luxury items”, the Investigative Committee said .

The day after the detention of Kuznetsov, they arrested a bribe suspect in the country - entrepreneur Lev Martirosyan. The court stated that Kuznetsov received a bribe in the form of “other property” in exchange for “general patronage of service in the interests of the bribe taker”. According to Kommersant, Kuznetsov is accused of receiving a bribe with a size of 30.5 million rubles for help in producing state contracts for 372 million rubles. According to investigators, in exchange for this, the entrepreneur bought and issued the land in Krasnodar for Kuznetsov’s wife and built a residential building on it.

Kuznetsov did not admit his guilt. At the appeal of the arrest, held on May 23, he stated that "as a decent citizen, he kept all his savings either on the accounts, as it should, or at home." In addition, Kuznetsov asked the court to take into account his state of health. “For four years without vacations, a year without weekends, the service carried, and, accordingly, has developed a bunch of [sores]. And now I have to drink pills every day, tolerate pain, ”Kuznetsova quoted Mediazon. The court left the head of the personnel department under arrest.

The day before the detention of Kuznetsov, Vladimir Putin announced the resignation of the defense minister Sergei Shoigu, who held this post for 12 years. In the telegram channels of the “military commissars and Z-bloggers, the arrests of Ivanov and Kuznetsov are associated with“ cleaning ”in the department-including after the appointment of a new leadership. The author of the telegram channel "Rybar", a former employee of the press service of the Ministry of Defense Mikhail Zvinchuk, wrote that the news about the arrest of Ivanov and Kuznetsov at the forefront "met with great enthusiasm."

Ivan Popov

On May 21, it became known about the arrest of another military man, but this time the personnel-former commander of the 58th Army, Major General Ivan Popov. Unlike the two previous defendants, Popov was accused not of a bribe, but of fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code).

From the command of Popov was removed back in July 2023 - after he criticized the actions of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces. In a closed chat in Telegram, he recorded a voice message. Later he was published by deputy Andrei Gurulev. In the message, Popov said that he “had a difficult situation with the authorities” when he had to “either be silent and smalled”, or “call a spade a spade.” According to him, he chose the second and “outlined all the problems” existing in the army, which was the reason for his removal. After the resignation, as the former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada and the leader of the separatists of the Donbass Oleg Tsarev ( anonymous telegram channels) were reported , Popov sent to Syria “one of the leaders”.

According to Vedomosti, who referred to a source in the Ministry of Defense, a criminal case against Popov was opened in connection with the theft and sale of metal structures staged for the construction of fortifications at the front. The Investigative Committee said that Popov was involved in the theft of more than 1,700 tons of “metal distribution products” worth over 130 million rubles purchased by the administration of the Zaporizhzhya region for the construction of defensive structures.

At the same time, on May 23, the SK asked Popov from the pre -trial detention center under house arrest.

Before his resignation, Popov led the defense of Russian troops in the Zaporizhzhya direction during the counterattack of the Armed Forces in the summer of 2023. The general did not admit guilt in the fraud case. Popov’s father told Baza to the Baza Telegram channel that his son was most likely set up. “They eat him there, do not know how to eat. He said something to the authorities, some truth, and from this moment it all started, ”Baza quotes Father Popov.

Vadim Shamarin

On May 23, it became known about the detention of the head of the Main Communication Department of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Vadim Shamarin. According to the investigation, from April 2016 to October 2023, Shamarin received a bribe of 36 million rubles from the general director of the Perm Telephone TETTER Aleksey Vysokov and chief accountant Elena Grishina for “increasing the volume of products supplied under state contracts for the needs of the Russian Ministry of Defense and General patronage. " The amount of the bribe in which Shamarin is suspected, as Kommersant writes , is at least one million rubles (this is considered a particularly large size). The court arrested Shamarin for two months. According to TASS, he did not plead guilty.

Vysokov and Grishin, and with them the former head of the TETTA enterprise Igor Morozov was also arrested - that the court satisfied the request of the investigation to detain them, Kommersant wrote back in July 2023. TASS, citing law enforcement agencies, writes that Vysokov and Grishina were testified for shamarin.

On the day of the detention of Shamarin, the presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, answering the question of arrests, commented them like this: “The fight against corruption is a consistent work. This is not a campaign, it is a constantly ongoing work. This is an integral part of our law enforcement agencies. We are not talking about any campaign here. ”

On the evening of May 23, a number of telegram channels said that another official of the military department was detained on suspicion of receiving a bribe-the head of the Department of Department for the Defense Order, Vladimir Verteletsky. His detention was also reported by Vedomosti, RBC and Interfax with links to sources.

Soon, the Investigative Committee specified that the Verteletsky was accused of abuse of power. According to the investigation, in 2022 he accepted unfulfilled works “in the framework of the development of the state contract”, as a result of which the state was damaged by the amount of more than 70 million rubles. The court concluded Verteletsky into custody.