Russian state prosecutors are looking for an almost 15-year jail sentence for former Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov on bribery and embezzlement charges, the Vedomosti business newspaper reported Monday.Ivanov, 49, who managed military building tasks, was arrested in April 2024, part of what would later on become a larger Kremlin crackdown on corruption within the Defense Ministry.Referred to in the Russian media as the attractive basic, Ivanov is the most senior military main arrested given that the 2022 intrusion of Ukraine.
He acted as deputy minister from 2016 and was widely seen as an ally of previous Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who was dismissed last May and selected secretary of Russias Security Council.Ivanov and his associate, entrepreneur Sergei Borodin, were initially implicated of receiving 1.19 billion rubles ($15.1 million) in kickbacks for Defense Ministry contracts.In October, district attorneys pressed surcharges, accusing Ivanov and his supposed accomplices of embezzling 4.1 billion rubles ($52.4 million) by means of foreign bank transfers, along with 216 million rubles throughout the purchase of two ferryboats for the Kerch Strait line connecting southern Russia and occupied Crimea.He is also accused of accepting more than 152 million rubles in bribes from Alexander Fomin, co-founder of the building company Olimpsitistroy.
Ivanov rejects the charges.In addition, prosecutors are looking for a 14-year sentence for another declared accomplice, Anton Filatov, previous director of the Defense Ministry subsidiary Oboronlogistika.The case, which has been held behind closed doors considering that March, is anticipated to conclude with a decision in early July, according to Vedomosti.In 2022, Ivanov was the subject of a high-profile investigation by the Anti-Corruption Foundation, founded by the late opposition activist Alexei Navalny, which declared he personally benefited from restoration operate in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol.