The ex-head of the largest veteran organization Andrei Chepurna was detained. He is suspected of embezzlement of the sanatorium for a billion rubles

The former chairman of the Iva - Disabled War Andrei Chepurnaya, who led one of the largest veteran organizations of Russia for many years, was detained in Moscow in the case of fraud on an especially large scale. According to investigators, he and the ex-director of the Veteran-Rus NPO Valery Belyalov illegally seized the complex of buildings of the Rus sanatorium, intended for the rehabilitation of veterans. The damage is estimated at more than 1 billion rubles. This was reported by TASS by the official representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia Irina Volk.

According to the investigation, in 2017, Chepurna and Belyalov illegally took possession of 48 real estate objects transferred by the Veteran-Rus NGOs allegedly by decision of the Iva leadership. The Ministry of Internal Affairs claims that the decision was made unauthorized and this allowed the defendants to arrange a complex of buildings at the NPO without legal grounds. In 2023, the Ruzsky District Court of the Moscow Region recognized the deal invalid, but the objects are still at the disposal of the organization. The investigation intends to achieve their arrest.

Investigative actions were accompanied by searches in Moscow and the Moscow Region. Documents, equipment and means of communication were seized. The investigation establishes possible accomplices, the case is under the control of the General Prosecutor's Office.

Andrei Chepurna is a former officer of the GRU special forces, twice the holder of the Order of the Red Star. For more than twenty years he headed one of the largest veteran organizations in Russia. After the loss of the federal post, Chepurnaya headed the Moscow branch of the same structure that received financing from the Moscow budget. In 2019, he was already condemned conditionally for the embezzlement of the funds of the Disabled War, and before that he was hiding from the investigation for a long time - as Kommersant wrote , “wandered between hospitals and a psychiatric hospital”. His conflict with other influential participants in the veteran movement, including Senator Franz Klintsevich, received wide publicity: Chepurnaya complained about him personally by President Putin, accusing the senator of the split of the veteran community.