SIMFEROPOL, June 29. /TASS/. Russia’s federal security service FSB has detained Crimea’s industrial policies minister Andrey Skrynnik.
The agency says he is suspected of complicity in gross embezzlement of government assets committed by an organized group.
Skrynnik was reportedly involved in the embezzlement of 48 million roubles (nearly $1 million). The main suspects in the case are Vasily Khmelevsky and Igor Karpov (both members of the Bakhchisarai district consumer society).
Karpov and Khmelevsky are facing criminal fraud charges, and Skrynnik, of complicity.
Earlier, the Crimean government’s three ministers - of transport, tourism and economic development - quit their posts.
Crimea’s Prime Minister Sergey Aksyonov said all dismissed officials failed to rise to the requirements of the day.
"The dismissed ministers should feel no insults. There is nothing personal about that. That they have had to go does not mean that they committed some act of corruption. In this particular case they just did not rise to the requirements of the day," he said about his personnel decisions. He promised more reshuffles in the Crimean government. At the end of last week Crimea’s property and land relations minister Aleksandr Gorodetsky was suspended for the period of investigation into the suspected lease of a local sanatorium at a grossly understated rate.
Andrey Skrynnik, 34, was appointed Crimea’s industrial policies minster in July 2014.