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Ex-Russian deputy education minister put on wanted list for fraud

According to the source, law enforcement agencies are working to verify reports that Marina Rakova could have left for Ukraine after she had been engaged in investigative activities

Marina Rakova Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TASS

Marina Rakova

© Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TASS

MOSCOW, October 1. /TASS/. Russia's former Deputy Minister of Education Marina Rakova has been charged with fraud in absentia, a law enforcement source told TASS, adding that she had been placed on a wanted list.

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According to the source, detectives plan to issue an international arrest warrant for Rakova soon and request that a court arrest her in absentia.

Rakova has indeed been put on a wanted list, Russian Interior Ministry Spokesperson Irina Volk confirmed to TASS. "The investigator has decided to press charges against the defendant based on Article 159.4 of the Russian Criminal Code (fraud). Since she absconded from the investigation, she has been put on a wanted list," she said.

"Law enforcement agencies are working to verify reports that Rakova could have left for Ukraine after she had been engaged in investigative activities. She was not taken into custody following a search of her home. Her ID documents were not seized," the source told TASS.

Moscow's Tverskoi District Court earlier ruled that former Director General of the federal state autonomous agency The Foundation for New Forms of Education Development Maxim Inkin and his former deputy Yevgeny Zak should be taken into custody on suspicion of major fraud in a case that also involves Rakova. Legal counsel Kristina Kryuchkova, who used to serve as executive director at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, was also arrested.

In 2019, then Deputy Minister of Education Marina Rakova lobbied for the allocation of state budget money for the Foundation for New Forms of Education Development that she used to head, based on the Teacher of the Future federal program that shaped part of the Education National Project. At the time, the fund was headed by Inkin, who now is a division managing director at Sberbank, while Zak is the director of the Moscow division of Sberbank's Digital Education Platform. According to investigators, Inkin and two other defendants embezzled the allocated funds.

Rakova was appointed deputy education minister in October 2018 and left the position in March 2020 to become Sberbank’s vice president.

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