MOSCOW (AP) — The director of the Russian military’s main convention center and a senior Defense Ministry official were arrested Monday on fraud charges, part of a wide-ranging investigation into the fraud. abuse of office in the highest echelons of the country’s military leadership.
The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top state criminal investigation agency, announced that Vyacheslav Akhmedov, head of Patriot Park, has been arrested on charges of fraud. Maj. Gen. Vladimir Shesterov, deputy head of the Defense Ministry’s innovation department, was arrested along with Akhmedov.
According to the commission, the two men are suspected of embezzling government funds intended for Patriot Park, a gigantic military exhibition and convention center just west of Moscow.
The site, which covers an area of more than 5,400 hectares (over 13,300 acres), has hosted annual military forums, international meetings and exhibitions of Russian weapons since it opened in 2015. In addition to conference halls and vast exhibition grounds, it includes an air base, a huge shooting range and even a massive Orthodox church. In 2019, President Vladimir Putin According to the Kremlin, he made a donation from his own pocket to have the church’s main icon made.
Their arrest follows a series of arrests of senior military officials who belonged to the inner circle of Sergei Shoigu, whom Putin dismissed shortly after his inauguration in May for a new term as defense minister.
Shoigu, who had personal ties to Putin, was given the high-profile post of secretary of the Russian Security Council, but several members of his inner circle lost their jobs and many of them were arrested, including his top associate and deputy, Timur Ivanovwho has been in prison for bribery since April.
The former defense minister was widely criticized for Russia’s setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine and accused of incompetence and corruption by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. In June 2023, he launched a brief mutiny to demand his resignation.
