MOSCOW, September 26 (RIA Novosti) – Investigators have compiled and sent to court a 27 million ruble ($840,000) fraud and abuse of office case against a senior military official, a spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee said Thursday.
Rear Adm. Sergei Kozlov, head of the military topography division of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, in July 2010 authorized the unlicensed use of maritime navigation charts for commercial purposes, costing the state more than 9.5 million rubles ($300,000), committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said.
In addition, in 2006, Kozlov deliberately misled members of the Defense Ministry’s central housing commission and the presidential property management department by claiming he did not own any residential property, when in fact he owned an apartment in the Moscow region, investigators say.
As a result, in 2008, Kozlov received an 18.5 million ruble ($575,000) apartment that was subsequently privatized by his stepdaughter, Markin said.
This is the latest in a lengthy series of criminal cases against Defense Ministry officials.
On Wednesday, a Moscow court sanctioned the arrest of a former defense company director suspected of embezzling 700 million rubles ($22 million).
Nikolai Tamodin, former head of the Voentelecom communications company, is believed to have provided substandard and therefore useless equipment to the Defense Ministry in 2011, costing the state more than 700 million rubles, the Interior Ministry said.
