MOSCOW, April 25 (Itar-Tass) – Criminal cases of former executives of the state company Rosoboronservice, which handled the procurement operations of the Russian Armed Forces, will be brought to the very end but only the court will have the power to establish the degree of their guilt, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday during a major nationwide question-time show.
He said it as he was answering a remark by his authorized delegate Viktor Voronets, who said it looks like “someone’s arm” does not make it possible to bring the prosecution of these criminal cases to the end.
“Neither the arm nor any other part of the body will ever prevent the investigators from finding out whether or not these people /Rosoboronservice bosses - Itar-Tass/ encroached on the law,” Putin said adding that the criminal cases had been instituted as soon as he had received a report from the Accounting Chamber.
“An unbiased investigation is in progress and I am confident it’ll be brought to the end,” he said.
“Still we cannot revert to the year 1937 /an allusion to the start of Joseph Stalin’s amassed purges of his presumed political opponents - Itar-Tass/ and to put those who are suspected of corruption to jail at whatever price,” Putin said.
“There’s no need to put anyone into jail in a preventive manner for the economic offenses of any kind and no one will be better off in reality if the suspect Yegeniya Vassilyeva /the central person in the Rosoboronservice scandal - Itar-Tass/ or any other people go to jail,” he said.
“On the contrary, we should see yet if all the convicts serving terms for economic crimes were sentenced correctly and if there was no mishandling of the justice system on the part of state power agencies,” Putin said.
Along with this, he said that only 15% of sentences are appealed at the courts of higher jurisdiction and this testifies to the efficiency of the Russian judiciary system.