{"id":33876,"date":"2024-04-24T01:01:50","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T01:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/24\/russian-deputy-defense-minister-is-detained-on-bribery-charges\/"},"modified":"2024-04-24T01:01:50","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T01:01:50","slug":"russian-deputy-defense-minister-is-detained-on-bribery-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/24\/russian-deputy-defense-minister-is-detained-on-bribery-charges\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian Deputy Defense Minister Is Detained on Bribery Charges"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"549\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/04\/23\/multimedia\/23russia-corruption-bftm\/23russia-corruption-bftm-facebookJumbo.jpg?resize=1050,549&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Russian Deputy Defense Minister Is Detained on Bribery Charges\" title=\"Russian Deputy Defense Minister Is Detained on Bribery Charges\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A deputy minister of defense in Russia has been detained on charges of taking a \u201clarge scale\u201d bribe, the country\u2019s top law enforcement investigators announced on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The brief announcement from the Investigative Committee divulged few details about what had led to Timur Ivanov, the deputy minister, being taken into custody. But the legal statute that he is accused of violating is for taking a bribe \u201con a particularly large scale,\u201d more than one million rubles, or more than $10,000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Ministry of Defense did not comment on the investigation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Ivanov, a deputy defense minister since 2016, had long been in charge of military construction projects, including most recently the huge contracts awarded to rebuild the Russian-occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which was <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/07\/21\/world\/europe\/mariupol-university-ukraine.html\" title=\"\">devastated by Russian attacks<\/a> soon after the February 2022 invasion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He was also responsible for building Patriot Park, a military theme space outside Moscow that featured exhibits of weaponry and a Russian Orthodox cathedral that sought to cast the experiences of the Russian armed forces in a holy light. He was awarded the Order for Merit to the Fatherland several times.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Ivanov was known as a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Sergei K. Shoigu, the Russian defense minister who is a close associate of President Vladimir V. Putin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The circumstances around the detention of a deputy minister with such high-ranking connections were not immediately clear. But the past pattern of such arrests has been that the person who fell from grace had run afoul of the business interests of the F.S.B., Russia\u2019s security services, or a construction oligarch with even more powerful connections.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cHe is not an outlier in terms of side hustles and unexplained wealth,\u201d said Dara Massicot, an expert on the Russian military at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. \u201cTo meet this sort of end to your career, you must have crossed someone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Pictures and reports about the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by Mr. Ivanov and his wife, at a level far beyond the reach of a government salary, have circulated in Russia for years. An <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/amp.meduza.io\/en\/feature\/2022\/12\/21\/a-humble-military-wife\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">investigation in 2022 by the Anti-Corruption Foundation<\/a>, an organization founded by the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, alleged that the couple\u2019s purchases included a Rolls-Royce, a $104,000 ring and designer clothes, as well as high-end vacation home and yacht rentals on the French Riviera.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The foundation and various news agencies reported that Mr. Ivanov and his wife, Svetlana, completed a sham divorce in June 2022 so that she could continue to travel across Europe even after he was put under European sanctions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Tuesday, government supporters and pro-war news channels were quick to refer to the couple\u2019s notorious spending habits soon after the announcement about Mr. Ivanov\u2019s detention.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Sergei Markov, a conservative Russian political commentator, said the idea was laughable that any bribes had been limited to the one-million-ruble range. \u201cNobody believes that,\u201d he wrote, while noting that the charge meant accepting significant bribes. \u201cThe deputy minister committed not just a crime, but a serious crime. A signal to everyone: Don\u2019t stand up for him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In a separate development on Tuesday, the Moscow Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church announced on its website that Rev. Dmitri Safronov, the parish priest who had delivered the funeral prayers for Mr. Navalny, would be barred from most public clerical duties for three years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The announcement did not specify an official reason for the punishment. But church analysts speculated online that it could only be for presiding at the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/03\/01\/world\/europe\/aleksei-navalny-funeral-moscow-russia.html?searchResultPosition=2\" title=\"\">funeral<\/a> of the opposition leader, who <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/02\/16\/world\/europe\/aleksei-navalny-dead.html\" title=\"\">died in February inside a Russian prison<\/a>. The Russian government reluctantly approved a funeral at a Moscow cemetery after an extended showdown with Mr. Navalny\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Milana Mazaeva<!-- --> contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/04\/23\/world\/europe\/russia-deputy-defense-minister-bribery.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A deputy minister of defense in Russia has been detained on charges of taking a \u201clarge scale\u201d bribe, the country\u2019s top law enforcement investigators announced on Tuesday. The brief announcement from the Investigative Committee divulged few details about what had led to Timur Ivanov, the deputy minister, being taken into custody. But the legal statute [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/04\/23\/multimedia\/23russia-corruption-bftm\/23russia-corruption-bftm-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28866,5808,5663,4888,9467,2124,1461],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33876"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33878,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33876\/revisions\/33878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}