The Meshchansky court of the capital sentenced the former general director of Voentelecom JSC to four years and two months in prison with a fine of 800 thousand rubles Alexandra Davydovaone of the “trial investigators” in the case of the former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces, Colonel General Khalila Arslanovaaccused of embezzlement in the amount of 1.4 billion rubles during the implementation of the digitalization program of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
Yulia Kotomina, the press secretary of the court, told Business FM that Davydov was found guilty of fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). “After the verdict was announced, the defendant, who was under bail not to leave, was taken into custody in the courtroom,” she said.
The criminal case of the former general director of JSC Voentelecom was brought to court at the beginning of the summer. However, in order to consider it, it took eight meetings.
During them, Davydov fully admitted his guilt. Earlier, he entered into a pre-trial cooperation agreement, testifying against the former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces, Colonel-General Khalil Arslanov, who, since July 2022, together with his two alleged accomplices, has been tried behind closed doors in the 235th garrison military court.
The investigation believes that in 2013-2018 in Moscow, Arslanov, as part of an organized group that included several more military officials and entrepreneurs, “using his official position by deceiving and abuse of the trust of officials of the Ministry of Defense,” embezzled funds from the federal budget in the amount of 1 billion 618 million rubles. The money was allocated for the program of digitalization of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, equipping the objects of the Ministry of Defense with digital telecommunications equipment under five government contracts. They involved the purchase of routers, as well as other military equipment, wires and other consumables. The investigation believes that the purchase of equipment and payment for work were carried out at an inflated cost. The defendants appropriated the difference from the actual price.
As part of one of the five contracts, according to investigators, 191 million rubles out of almost 250 million rubles were stolen. They were allocated by JSC “Voentelecom” when performing a set of works on field supervision of monitoring centers and managing a network of monitoring systems for communication satellites. However, the damage in this episode is considered repaid, since Voentelecom eventually returned the entire advance paid to it in the amount of 199 million rubles.
That is why the actual damage is estimated at 1 billion 419 million rubles, and the Ministry of Defense filed a claim for this amount both in the framework of the Arslanov case and Davydov, who admitted guilt.
The Meshchansky Court of Moscow did not consider the claim and transferred it for consideration in civil proceedings.
It is worth noting that, unlike Arslanov, who, in addition to fraud in the amount of 1.4 billion rubles, is charged with taking a bribe in 2016 (part 6 of article 290 of the Criminal Code) of 12 million rubles, five other defendants in the case preferred to make a deal with the investigation. Four of them are the former head of the 1st Directorate of the Main Directorate of Communications (GUS) of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Major General Alexander Ogloblinex-adviser to the head of JSC “Voentelecom” Dmitry Semiletov, the deputy general director of this enterprise Oleg Savitsky and the general director of Ersiay LLC Tatyana Ilyina – have already been sentenced by various courts to terms of three to four and a half years in a colony. On August 29, 2022, according to the verdict of the Meshchansky Court of Moscow, Ilyina received the shortest term.
