The investigations continue in the Oboronservis property misappropriation case. The court sanctioned the arrest of deputy general director of the open joint stock company Slavyanka Konstantin Lapshin, who is suspected of the misappropriation of many millions of roubles, which were allocated for the maintenance of the buildings and facilities in the Russian Defence Ministry. Meanwhile, former Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov may become a suspect, but not a witness.
On Wednesday, it was reported about the arrest pending for one more defendant in the criminal case over misappropriations in the commercial entities related with the Defence Ministry, the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily reported. This new defendant is deputy general director of the company Slavyanka Konstantin Lapshin.
Lapshin became the fifth defendant in the criminal case investigated against the officials of the Russian Defence Ministry and the chief executives of the companies Security and Communications and Slavyanka. The newspaper recalled that the Khamovnichesky District Court of Moscow has earlier arrested acting head of the economic department of the Russian Defence Ministry Nikolai Ryabykh. He is suspected of massive fraud.
Ryabykh is an official from the team of the former defence minister, the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily reported. As many Serdyukov’s appointees, he passed to work in the Defence Ministry from the Federal Taxation Service. But he actually ruled this quite profit-making army structure, as the life showed. Meanwhile, Serdyukov assumed the full economic management of this army body, therefore, Ryabykh apparently was not afraid of a tough control from financial and other inspections of the Defence Ministry.
Turning former Defence Minister Serdyukov from a witness in a suspect or a defendant is possible after an inspection of the illegal construction of the road to a commercial site owned by Serdyukov’s relatives, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily noted with the reference to a source close to the investigation. These reports of the detectives can be taken in the way that the misappropriation facts in Oboronservis and Slavyanka are obviously not enough to bring accusations against the former defence minister, the newspaper believes.
The law enforcers launched an inquiry in the details of the illegal construction of the road to the commercial entity in the Astrakhan Region, which a relative of former Defence Minister Serdyukov owns. Upon results of this inquiry a future procedural status of the former minister will be determined, a source that knows the current situation in the investigation said. “This is the illegal construction of the road stretching at about eight kilometres to a commercial site, which the husband of the sister of the former minister possesses,” he remarked. The law enforcement agencies reported that the Russian state sustained the damages to the tune of 18 million roubles as a result of these criminal actions. “There are no untouchables in this criminal case, if the guilt of the former defence minister is proved, he will be brought to justice,” the source underlined.