Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ A retired Russian rear admiral has been convicted of stealing over half a billion rubles allocated to repairing anti-aircraft missile systems. He was fined 500,000 rubles and immediately released from custody. ⬇️

2/ Rear Admiral Nikolai Kovalenko was found guilty yesterday in the Moscow Region Garrison Court of organising a large-scale embezzlement of Russian Ministry of Defence funds allocated to four contracts for the repair of anti-aircraft missile systems between 2013 and 2017.

3/ The fraud involved purchasing faulty components from Ukraine in 2012 – before the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of the Donbas – for only 40 million rubles ($521,000) and passing them off as refurbished ones. A total of 592 million rubles ($7.7 m) was reportedly stolen.

4/ As well as Kovalenko, several other military and civilian personnel were convicted. The fraud involved several companies including the Saratov Radio Equipment Plant, Soyuz-M, and the Elektropribor plant, whose heads were personally involved as co-conspirators.

5/ The court sentenced Kovalenko to 4.5 years of imprisonment and a fine of 500,000 rubles ($6,519). He was immediately released on health grounds and will not have to serve time in a prison colony.

6/ Six of his accomplices were less fortunate and were sentenced to between three and eight years' worth of imprisonment, fines, and in the case of service members, being stripped of their ranks. They are:

7/ 🔺 Retired Captain 1st Rank Vasily Vitchenko, former head of the missile and artillery weapons service at the Main Command of the Russian Navy (3.5 years, fine of 400 thousand rubles, stripped of rank);

8/ 🔺 Retired Captain 3rd Rank Andrei Klokotsky, former consultant to the Navy Department of Rosoboronexport (3 years, fine of 400 thousand rubles);

🔺 Zamir Akhmedov, former head of the Soyuz-M company (4 years, fine of 500 thousand rubles);

9/🔺 Mutalib Emiraliyev, former head of the Elektropribor plant (8 years, fine of 800 thousand rubles);

🔺 Evgeny Murashev, former director of the Saratov Radio Equipment Plant (3 years, fine of 500 thousand rubles);

10/ 🔺 Captain 1st Rank (Reserve) Vadim Movchan, Head of the Missile and Artillery Weapons Development and Operation Service of the Navy's Shipbuilding Directorate (5.5 years, fine of 500 thousand rubles, stripped of military rank).

11/ While it pre-dates the current war, the case helps to illustrate how so much Russian military equipment was in such poor condition at the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

12/ Corrupt military officials and contractors had orchestrated the systematic looting of the Russian military budget for decades, with this being just one of many similar cases. /end

Sources:
🔹 rbc.ru/politics/16/02…
🔹 theins.ru/news/289415