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A deputy minister of protection in Russia has been detained on costs of taking a “massive scale” bribe, the nation’s high legislation enforcement investigators introduced on Tuesday.
The temporary announcement from the Investigative Committee divulged few particulars about what had led to Timur Ivanov, the deputy minister, being taken into custody. But the authorized statute that he’s accused of violating is for taking a bribe “on a very massive scale,” a couple of million rubles, or greater than $10,000.
The Ministry of Defense didn’t touch upon the investigation.
Mr. Ivanov, a deputy protection minister since 2016, had lengthy been in control of navy development initiatives, together with most not too long ago the massive contracts awarded to rebuild the Russian-occupied japanese Ukrainian metropolis of Mariupol, which was devastated by Russian assaults quickly after the February 2022 invasion.
He was additionally chargeable for constructing Patriot Park, a navy theme area exterior Moscow that featured displays of weaponry and a Russian Orthodox cathedral that sought to forged the experiences of the Russian armed forces in a holy mild. He was awarded the Order for Merit to the Fatherland a number of occasions.
Mr. Ivanov was often known as a protégé of Sergei Okay. Shoigu, the Russian protection minister who’s a detailed affiliate of President Vladimir V. Putin.
The circumstances across the detention of a deputy minister with such high-ranking connections weren’t instantly clear. But the previous sample of such arrests has been that the one who fell from grace had run afoul of the enterprise pursuits of the F.S.B., Russia’s safety providers, or a development oligarch with much more highly effective connections.
“He just isn’t an outlier by way of facet hustles and unexplained wealth,” mentioned Dara Massicot, an knowledgeable on the Russian navy on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “To meet this kind of finish to your profession, you will need to have crossed somebody.”
Pictures and experiences in regards to the lavish life-style loved by Mr. Ivanov and his spouse, at a stage far past the attain of a authorities wage, have circulated in Russia for years. An investigation in 2022 by the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a corporation based by the opposition chief Aleksei A. Navalny alleged that the couple’s purchases included a Rolls-Royce, a $104,000 ring and designer garments, in addition to high-end trip house and yacht leases on the French Riviera.
The basis and varied information companies reported that Mr. Ivanov and his spouse, Svetlana, accomplished a sham divorce in June 2022 in order that she might proceed to journey throughout Europe even after he was put beneath European sanctions.
On Tuesday, authorities supporters and pro-war information channels have been fast to consult with the couple’s infamous spending habits quickly after the announcement about Mr. Ivanov’s detention.
Sergei Markov, a conservative Russian political commentator, mentioned the thought was laughable that any bribes had been restricted to the one-million-ruble vary. “Nobody believes that,” he wrote, whereas noting that the cost meant accepting vital bribes. “The deputy minister dedicated not only a crime, however a severe crime. A sign to everybody: Don’t arise for him.”
In a separate growth on Tuesday, the Moscow Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church introduced on its web site that Rev. Dmitri Safronov, the parish priest who had delivered the funeral prayers for Mr. Navalny, could be barred from most public clerical duties for 3 years.
The announcement didn’t specify an official purpose for the punishment. But church analysts speculated on-line that it might solely be for presiding on the funeral of the opposition chief, who died in February inside a Russian jail. The Russian authorities reluctantly accredited a funeral at a Moscow cemetery after an prolonged showdown with Mr. Navalny’s mom.
Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.
