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Prosecutors consider Yevgenia Vasilyeva proven guilty of embezzlement

Prosecutors say that evidence and witness accounts prove Vasilyeva’s guilt of embezzling around $58 million

Yevgenia Vasilyeva ITAR-TASS/Anton Novoderezhkin

Yevgenia Vasilyeva

© ITAR-TASS/Anton Novoderezhkin

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MOSCOW, April 23. /TASS/. A prosecutor has said at Moscow’s Presnensky court session that he considers Yevgenia Vasilyeva, former head of Department of Property Relations at Russia’s Defense Ministry, proven guilty of embezzling 3 billion rubles (around $58 million), a TASS correspondent reported from the scene on Thursday.

Prosecutors say that evidence and witness accounts prove Vasilyeva’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

"As a result of court hearings, prosecution has come to a conclusion that Vasilyeva and other suspects in the case are guilty on all counts," prosecutor Yury Khalizov said.

Vasilyeva has been under home arrest since November 23, 2012.

The large-scale embezzlement case at the Russian defense ministry is one of the most high-profile corruption cases in modern Russia involving former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, who lost his post over it.

Soon after his resignation, Vasilyeva’s chief, Anatoly Serdyukov, was charged with negligence, which incurred huge material damage. Military investigators claim that the former defence minister issued verbal instructions to his subordinates to use funds from the defence ministry’s budget to build a motor road from the village of Krasa, Russia’s Astrakhan region, to the island of Shkolnyi where a non-profit partnership "Zhitnoye" was located. The partnership was owned by another person involved in the case, Serdyukov’s son-in-law Puzikov, who handed over this resort to the defence ministry as soon as the investigation was launched.

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