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Volgograd region official admits receiving bribe and pays back 15 million roubles

Two more million roubles are expected to be paid back shortly

VOLGOGRAD, January 14 (Itar-Tass) — The Volgograd region’s former Deputy Prime Minister Pavel Krupnov admitted having received a bribe, Head the regional Investigative Committee Mikhail Muzrayev told a news conference on Monday.

“Krupnov is suspected of receiving a major bribe,” Murzayev said. “During the investigation, the former official confessed.”

The former official, he continued, had made a decision to assist the investigation and paid back 15 million roubles, while two more million roubles are expected to be paid back shortly.

Reporters saw video, where Krupnov’s wife was taking out from a textile purse packs of bank notes of one and five thousand roubles. The investigative committee’s official did not explain where the money had been kept, explaining the refusal by an investigation secret.

Pavel Krupnov supervised in the regional government activities of the healthcare ministry, and two more suspects were detained on January 6. The investigation suspects them of having received a bribe of 17 million roubles. The three suspects will remain in custody in compliance with the court decision. Several days after the detention, Krupnov was dismissed from his position in the regional government.

The investigators say, that the official ordered Igor Pimkin and his deputy Alexei Kramarenko, who worked for a state-run company supervising construction and maintenance, to find a construction company to have a contract with it on repairing of the region’s oncology hospital, where the cost was 170 million roubles. It did not take long to find a contractor. The major condition was that the company is ready to pay back a bribe of ten percent of the cost. Krupnov told the investigation that in July of past year, the regional government drew a contract with the company, and practically immediately the official received the bribe of 17 million roubles.

Although under the contract the works must have been done by October 31, 2012, the hospital is still under overhaul, “which negatively tells on its medical services and conditions of its patients,” spokesman for the Russian Investigations Committee Vladimir Markin told Itar-Tass earlier.

On Sunday, Pimkin and Kramarenko were charged with large-scale bribe-taking (part 6, article 290 of the Russian Criminal Code). If court proves their guilt, they will face a fine 80 times as big as the bribe. Moreover, they will be banned to take governmental posiyiond for the term of three years. Or, they will face a prison term of eight to 15 years and a fine 70 times as big as the bribe. The investigation is underway.

Pavel Krupnov used to be Chief Doctor at Astrakhan’s hospital 3, and from 2008 he was head of Healthcare Committee at the Astrahan Mayor’s Office. In March of 2012, Governor Sergei Bozhenov invited him to work at the government of the Volgograd region.