MOSCOW, September 25 (RIA Novosti) – A Moscow court on Wednesday sanctioned the arrest of a former defense company director suspected of embezzling 700 million rubles ($20 million), the RAPSI legal news agency reported.
Nikolai Tamodin, former head of the Voentelecom communications company, is believed to have provided substandard and therefore useless equipment to the Defense Ministry in 2011, causing damage to the state in excess of 700 million rubles, the Interior Ministry said.
Voentelecom has 27 subsidiaries and affiliated organizations across the country from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, including nine defense facilities. Police suspect that the 2011 embezzlement was not the only crime committed by the former top manager.
This is the latest in a series of criminal cases as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged corruption at the Defense Ministry’s property service company, Oboronservis. The probe has implicated several high-level government officials.
Oboronservis, which deals with the repair and maintenance of Defense Ministry installations, equipment and real estate, has been at the center of a series of high-profile corruption scandals since last November, when several of its top executives were arrested on charges related to fraudulent real estate sales.
An investigation into Oboronservis’ activities was the official reason given for the dismissal of then-Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov late last year. Serdyukov has been questioned on two occasions by investigators and is still considered a witness, the Investigative Committee said earlier this year.
