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1/ A former head of procurement of the Russian Ministry of Defence has been sentenced to nine years' imprisonment for accepting 15 million rubles ($154,950) in bribes. It's the latest in an interlinked series of corruption scandals in the Russian military procurement system. ⬇️ 
2/ The newspaper Kommersant reports that Lt Col Vladislav Gukov, formerly the head of a division of the Russian MOD's procurement department, has been sent to a strict regime (maximum security) prison colony, fined 45.9 million rubles ($474,147), and stripped of his medals.
3/ Both sides have filed appeals against the verdict handed down by the Venevsky District Court of the Tula Region; the defendant is appealing for obvious reasons, while the prosecution is unhappy because they consider the sentence to be too weak.
4/ IInvestigators found that Gukov had received the bribes in February-March 2020 in a series of payments made by Viktor Savvateev, the general director of the Voronezh Research and Production Association (NPO) Polyus.
5/ The bribes related to the purchase of mobile X-ray diagnostic systems, mounted in KAMAZ trucks. Each system cost between 10–15 million rubles and was required urgently during the coronavirus pandemic.
6/ The supplier, Polyus, is a specialist in the supply of various types of medical equipment mounted on off-road vehicles. Its general director, Savvateev, was not prosecuted due to him confessing and implicating Gukov, who for his part neither admitted guilt nor offered remorse.
7/ Gukov's personal assets have been seized in lieu of the fine imposed on him. They include real estate valued at 20 million rubles ($206,600), as well as an Audi A6, Skoda Octavia, Toyota Alphard, Toyota Voxy Hybrid, and a Harley Davidson FXFB motorcycle.
8/ Gukov's reported former role and personal connections are of some interest. According to a source cited by the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, he formerly headed the MOD department responsible for procurement concerning Russia's air defence and early warning systems.
9/ VChK-OGPU calls Gukov "a friend of Major-General Vyacheslav Lobuzko, one of the "fathers" of Voronezh VZG radars – stations designed to detect ballistic and cruise missiles – and ex-commander of the division of the 3rd separate air defence army."
10/ VChK-OGPU says that "Gukov was sure to the last that he could be saved by his patrons from the FSB and friends from the defence-industrial complex, but it did not happen." He reportedly has the same lawyer as Lobuzko.
11/ Lubuzko is at the centre of his own corruption scandal. He is currently under arrest and facing trial in Dubna, near Moscow, in relation to the massively over-budget construction of the National Defence Control Centre (NDCC) in Moscow in 2014.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1659251593890365474
12/ According to Kommersant, Lobuzko is accused of giving a 980,000 ruble ($10,123) bribe to Russian MOD official Col Andrei Marchukov as a reward for having "turned a blind eye to deficiencies in the acceptance of products manufactured under the state defence order."
13/ Marchukov himself has already been convicted of corruption offences. He was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, fined 2.94 million rubles ($30,370) and stripped of his rank. The apartment he bought with Lobuzko's bribe was also confiscated.
14/ In yet another scandal linked to Lobuzko, investigators have also reportedly found that the giant Voronezh radars he once commanded have been severely degraded by the substitution of expensive military-grade components by cheap foreign equivalents.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1655449330021433347
15/ The interlinked cases show the extent to which corruption is embedded in the Russian military procurement system, even (or perhaps especially) at its highest levels. It's not just about individual corrupt officials, but implicates networks of corruption. /end
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