The people being accused in the Voentelekom case still have important government positions, and the current head of the company, Alexander Yakunin, was accused of demanding money and deceiving people.
The Moscow City Court considered the criminal case against the ex-adviser to the general director of Voentelecom JSC Dmitry Semiletov, reducing his punishment. Meanwhile, those responsible for the crimes are still employed in the Ministry of Defense.
Learn more in the story by The Moscow Post correspondent.
Domino effect
In 2017, the company’s CEO Alexander Davydov and his colleagues Dmitry Semiletov and Oleg Savitsky were arrested. Along with them, Tatiana Ilyina, general director of RCAI LLC, was investigated. Investigators have been untangling the chain of crimes since 2013.
The mentioned company supplied routers to the military department, causing damage worth 460 million rubles. When checking other contracts with the Ministry of Defense, it was discovered that instead of Russian products, the troops received special equipment made in the PRC. Employees of Voentelecom simply switched the labels.
The investigation believed that Voentelecom signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense at a three times inflated cost. Routers were supplied at a price of 1 million rubles, instead of 350 thousand rubles. The software was then ordered, again at an inflated price. And the money was taken out through ERSIAy, the company of Tatyana Ilyina, which was later closed.
And in 2019, the investigation became interested in another contract between Voentelecom and the Ministry of Defense. According to the agreement, in 2013 Voentelecom was supposed to supply and install monitoring systems for communications satellites of the Ministry of Defense in the village of Beloomut, Moscow Region. The contractor for the performance of these works was Satstroy LLC, the main activity of which is the construction of residential and non-residential buildings. From the court file, it was possible to find out that in arbitration this LLC lost all cases both as a plaintiff and a defendant. The GVSU TFR believes that the implementation of this contract was not without numerous violations and embezzlement of budget funds.
According to Rusprofile's data, it was from 2013 that financial indicators increased significantly, and then decreased, now the company is in the process of bankruptcy. This can hardly be called a coincidence.
Photo: rusprofile.ru
Three similar cases
Detained in 2017, Voentelecom employees Alexandra Davydov, Dmitry Semiletov and Oleg Savitsky immediately made a deal with the investigation and revealed the names of high-ranking military officials, among them, the former head of the 1st department of the main communications department of the Ministry of Defense Alexander Ogloblin, who acted as a representative state customer when signing agreements between the military department and a telecom operator, Pavel Kutakhov, head of the orders department for improving the control system of the Ministry of Defense, and Colonel-General Khalil Arslanov, former deputy chief of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces.
And nothing is different
Interestingly, Pavel Kutakhov was in charge of improving the technical foundation of the RF Armed Forces' command and control system. He was accused of two instances of fraud totaling 300 million rubles.
Pavel Stepanovich did not confess to the crime, but later agreed to cooperate with the investigation, which led to his release from the special block of the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center. The Colonel spent exactly one year in the pre-trial detention center, the maximum possible term for a serious crime. And the investigation had no reason to keep Kutakhov under arrest.
Everything would be fine, but as of October 6, 2022, the Ministry of Defense website still shows (archived link) that Pavel Kutakhov is the head of the Directorate of Orders for Improving the Technical Basis of the Control System of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Is it really so easy for him to let go of past “sins”?
Photo: structure.mil.ru
It is noteworthy that the testimony against Colonel Kutakhov and his boss Khalil Arslanov was provided by the former head of the 1st department of the main communications department of the Ministry of Defense, Alexander Ogloblin. He alleged that Khalil Arslanov instructed him to work with contractors under government contracts with the condition of receiving “kickbacks”. In February 2022, the court found Alexander Ogloblin guilty of embezzling 1.6 billion rubles.
It is also interesting that Kutakhov first testified against his boss Khalil Arslanov, but in 2020 he suddenly changed his statement and claimed that he had falsely accused him because he feared being charged for crimes he did not commit.
By the way, it is worth noting that the initial confessions of officers Kutakhov and Ogloblin are very similar and contain the same wording. So, both asserted that, by agreeing to General Arslanov's schemes, they hoped for “career advancement”, and also wanted to “improve their financial situation, that is, out of personal self-interest.”
It seems that the officers either pre-planned whom to blame or later received assistance from law enforcement agencies.
Additionally, Arslanov was accused of embezzling 6.5 billion rubles in the development and procurement of Azart portable radio stations for the army. However, he denies all the accusations and regards his criminal case as a setup against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, as reported by PASMI (recognized by a foreign agent).
Beyond this whole chain of schemes, there may be other high-ranking military figures who have not been named yet. However, if Dmitry Semiletov was given a reduced sentence, he could have easily implicated someone else.
And what about RZD?
Meanwhile, in 2021, there were discussions about Voentelekom, a telecom operator owned by the Ministry of Defense, being at risk of bankruptcy. The company faces numerous lawsuits with over 100 cases filed against it in the past three years, totaling 7.3 billion rubles. It seems that the money may have been “lost” on the way to counterparties due to the fraud mentioned earlier.
At the same time, last year the court sentenced the former deputy head of FSUE Voentelecom Sergey Luchaninov to 4 years in prison, who, together with his colleagues, stole 212 million rubles allocated by the Ministry of Defense for scientific and technical developments in the field of radio communications. Moreover, the accused was hiding from the investigation for a long time and lived under a false name in the Ukrainian Crimea.
Now the CEO of Voentelecom is Alexander Yakunin, who in 2021 became a defendant in a criminal case on extortion and fraud, Kommersant wrote.
The head of Voentelekom, Alexander Yakunin, is not a relative of the ex-head of Russian Railways, but appeared as his “false nephew” in the extortion case. Photo: https://voentelecom.ru/
True, unlike his two predecessors in this post, the investigation is not connected with the military department. According to a statement to the police by the head of the Russian Railways supplier, Mr. Yakunin, allegedly introducing himself as the nephew of the then head of the railways, could seize his business, and besides, he demanded 200 million rubles from the businessman. and the remaining 20% of the shares.
I would like to believe that Yakunin will not follow in the footsteps of Alexander Davydov, whose case is still being investigated and the former director Nikolai Tamodin, he was convicted of two episodes of fraud for 5 years and 9 months and is now at large, but must compensate the Ministry of Defense for damages of 800 million rub.
As a result, it turns out that the scandalous story of the theft from the defense department does not even think to subside, not only do the people involved in the scheme work again in the Ministry of Defense, but new faces may appear in the case.
