Former Russian defence official guilty of fraud

Former chief of the Defence Ministry’s property department, Yevgenia Vasilieva is guilty of fraud in selling the ministry’s assets, Presnensky Court Judge Tatiana Vashyuchenkova said, as she continued to read out the sentence passed in the Oboronservis $3-billion embezzlement case for a second day.
According to the sentence, after taking the position of chief of the Defence Ministry’s property relations department in 2010, Vasilieva devised a criminal embezzlement scheme. In effecting the plan she used the authority and powers her position implied.

Also, the judge said the court had found Vasilieva, guilty of legalizing (laundering) embezzled financial proceeds from the sale of Defence Ministry assets. According to the sentence, the stolen funds were transferred to the accounts of firms owned by Vasilieva’s accomplices for ostensibly provided services.

Besides, the court ruled that Vasilieva, committed crimes together with a criminal group she had created and led herself. The other members of the crime ring were former director of the Moscow Air Force and Air Defence district’s logistics depot, Maksim Zakutailo, general director of the 31st State Institute of Special Construction and several research institutions, Yuri Grekhnev, Irina Yegorova, who controlled the institute’s financial and economic transactions, and chief of the Oboronstroi building firm Larisa Yegorina. All of these entities were affiliated with the Oboronservis, through which the Defence Ministry was selling non-core and loss-generating assets. The Oboronservis fraud case is one of the high-profile corruption affairs that have made headline news more than once for the past two and a half years.