The investigatory office of the 4th Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) of Russia has initiated a criminal case for an offense under Part 2 of Art. 201 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation (abuse of power resulting in serious consequences). The staff of the Economic Security and Anti-corruption Department of MVD came to Russian Space Systems JSC (RSS).
This happened after the Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) director Vladimir Popovkin had given them the results of internal audit of RKS.
The auditors found that from 2006 to 2010, a part of the work on GLONASS was actually carried out by RSS staff, but the charge for allegedly executed research contracts was transferred to NPO KP CJSC and Sinertek Company accounts. According to MVD, these companies did not have their own material and technical resources and a qualified professional staff, but they were controlled by RSS management in return. Then, as the MVD department noted, the funds were taken out of the legitimate turnover through one-day firms and appropriated. Thus, as the investigation established, RSS unreasonably spent more than 565 million rubles. In addition, the investigation is checking information about cashing-out 1.2 billion of 6 billion rubles which had been transferred by RSS to the third-party organizations.
According to the media, criminal case number 118021 was raised against "unidentified persons” from the RSS management. However, the two RSS managers - CEO and general designer Yuri Urlichich and his first deputy Ivan Golub - are being checked for involvement in the unlawful diversion of the budgetary funds. Both RSS top managers appeared in the conflict with Vladimir Popovkin who said that the main stream of GLONASS funds had gone through NPO KP CJSC and the Sinertek JSC. Moreover, the head of Roscosmos did not rule out that Yuri Urlichich had been able to control these companies.
According to the expert reports and the searches which were held in the offices of the RSS heads, specific persons involved may appear in the case. In addition, as the Economic Security and Anti-corruption Department of MVD noted that “the operational-investigative activities aimed to establish new episodes of illegal activity are continuing" in RSS.
