MOSCOW, February 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russian investigators are checking whether a high-level official in charge of overseeing the country’s lucrative fishing sector, who is suspected of forging documents to protect a subordinate charged with accepting nearly $900,000 in bribes, is involved in other crimes, an Investigative Committee spokesman said.
“Now [Andrei] Krainy is being checked for involvement in a number of other crimes,” Vladimir Markin wrote in his Twitter microblog, without specifying what crimes he meant.
Krainy, head of Russia’s Federal Fisheries Agency (Rosrybolovstvo), faces forgery charges after investigators found he had backdated the dismissal of a subordinate in order to mitigate the potential punishment for the man's alleged corruption, investigators said.
Krainy has denied the accusations saying HR department officials are to blame for the forgery.
The subordinate, Sergei Muravyov, who headed the Northwest Territorial Administration of Rosrybolovstvo, was detained in May 2011 as he accepted a 5 million ruble ($166,000) bribe.
Muravyov has been charged with large-scale bribe-taking, abuse of power and forgery. Investigators said he received 26 million rubles ($863,000) in bribes for hiring staff without experience and skills in the area of fishing control.
Krainy, 54, was appointed head of Rosrybolovstvo in May 2007. Since then, Rosrybolovstvo changed its legal status twice, becoming a state committee for fishery in October 2007 and a federal agency in May 2008.
