Top Russian defence officials held on fraud charges in military scandal

The director of the Russian military’s main congress centre and a top Defence Ministry official were arrested on Monday on fraud charges, part of a sweeping probe into abuse of office in the top echelons of the country’s military leadership.

The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top state criminal investigation agency, announced that Vyacheslav Akhmedov, head of the Patriot Park was arrested on charges of fraud. Maj. Gen. Vladimir Shesterov, deputy head of the Defence Ministry’s innovations department, was detained along with Akhmedov.

The committee said the two men are suspected of embezzling government funds earmarked for the Patriot Park, a gigantic military exhibition and congress centre just west of Moscow.

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The venue, which covers an area of more than 5,400 hectares (over 13,300 acres), has hosted annual army forums, international meetings and displays of Russian weapons since it opened in 2015. Along with conference halls and sprawling exhibition grounds, it includes an air base, a massive firing range and even a huge Orthodox Church.

In 2019, President Vladimir Putin made a donation from his own money to commission the church’s main icon, according to the Kremlin.

Their detention follows a series of arrests of senior military officials who were part of an inner circle of Sergei Shoigu, whom Putin dismissed as defence minister soon after his May inauguration for a new term.

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Shoigu, who had personal ties with Putin, was given the high-profile post of secretary of Russia’s Security Council, but several members of his close entourage lost their jobs and many of them were arrested, including his top associate and deputy, Timur Ivanov, who has been jailed on bribery charges since April.

The former defence minister had been widely criticised for Russia’s setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine and was accused of incompetence and corruption by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who launched a brief mutiny in June 2023 to demand his dismissal.