MOSCOW, November 13 (Itar-Tass) — The main military prosecutor's office passed to the investigators new materials on military property sale fraud.
"It is a whole property complex comprising 70 buildings and structures whose area totals 36,000 square meters. It sprawls on more than 20 hectares of land in the Odintsovo district. It was a procurements complex for the organizations engaged in maintenance of military equipment and armaments, and it was sold for a mere 320 million roubles," the military prosecutors said.
In the course of a check, the experts concluded that the price of the military property in question was understated by more than one billion roubles.
Therefore, the aggregate damage caused by the sale of military property at low prices is approaching five billion roubles.
On October 5, the investigators of the main military investigation department opened five criminal cases over fraud and abuse of authority in the sale of former Defense Ministry facilities at a price understated by three billion roubles.
These facilities included a 3-hectare land plot in the Temryukovsky district of the Krasnodar Territory, where the Defense Ministry had built a countryside complex worth over 300 million roubles. Later, the land plot was sold for 92 million roubles. The investigators said Defense Ministry officials had alienated the land plot from federal property and then leased it to a subordinate company.
The case materials cite seven more real estate facilities, such as the state design institute in central Moscow sold at 282 million roubles, three buildings in central Moscow and the land plot sold for 700 million roubles /down 200 million roubles from the market value/, and the Soyuz hotel and its land plot in Moscow’s Universitetsky Street /sold at 600 million roubles, which 1.5 times lower than the market price/.
The investigators said Defense Ministry officials had selected the most liquid and prestigious assets belonging to the Ministry, including Moscow-based property. As a rule, tremendous budget funds were injected into the property before it was sold at understated prices to commercial bodies affiliated with Oboronservis.
On November 7, military prosecutors said they had exposed the sale of two more Defense Ministry facilities at a price understated by 590 million roubles.
The prosecutors said the facilities were an oil terminal in the Murmansk region that had supplied fuel to the North Fleet, and a package of shares and real estate belonging to the 43rd central experimental production works /an affiliate of Oboronservis/, a unique company that sews military uniforms, which is on the registry of defense sector companies.
The checks therefore found that the damage caused by violations in the use of military property exceeds the initially estimated damage by four times. In 2011 and the beginning of 2012, military prosecutor exposed almost 5,000 violations in the use of military property that caused an estimated damage of 1.3 billion roubles.
Chief military prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said earlier this year that military officials had failed to preserve and properly use the facilities in unfinished construction projects, in which the state had invested almost 14 billion roubles.