A deputy minister of protection in Russia has been detained on prices of taking a “massive scale” bribe, the nation’s prime regulation 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. However 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 Protection didn’t touch upon the investigation.
Mr. Ivanov, a deputy protection minister since 2016, had lengthy been accountable for navy building initiatives, together with most lately the large 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 answerable for constructing Patriot Park, a navy theme area outdoors Moscow that featured reveals of weaponry and a Russian Orthodox cathedral that sought to forged the experiences of the Russian armed forces in a holy gentle. He was awarded the Order for Advantage to the Fatherland a number of occasions.
Mr. Ivanov was often called 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. However 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 companies, or a building oligarch with much more highly effective connections.
“He isn’t an outlier when it comes to aspect hustles and unexplained wealth,” mentioned Dara Massicot, an skilled on the Russian navy on the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace in Washington. “To satisfy this kind of finish to your profession, you have to have crossed somebody.”
Photos and reviews concerning the lavish way of life 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 Basis, 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 inspiration 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 underneath European sanctions.
On Tuesday, authorities supporters and pro-war information channels had been fast to seek advice from 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. “No one believes that,” he wrote, whereas noting that the cost meant accepting vital bribes. “The deputy minister dedicated not only a crime, however a critical crime. A sign to everybody: Don’t get up for him.”
In a separate improvement 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 cause for the punishment. However 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 authorised a funeral at a Moscow cemetery after an prolonged showdown with Mr. Navalny’s mom.
Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.
