The former deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin, was sentenced to seven years in prison on Monday for taking bribes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
Shamarin is one of a number of high-ranking officials accused in a series of corruption scandals that have engulfed the highest echelons of the Russian military over the past year.
The charges signal Russian President Vladimir Putin's drive to crack down on bribery, inefficiency and waste in Russia's vast military budget, which has been at war in Ukraine for more than three years, Reuters notes.
Russia's Investigative Committee said Shamarin, 53, took bribes worth 36 million rubles (440 000) between 2019 and 2023 from a plant in the Ural Mountains that produces communications equipment. In return, he increased the size of government contracts awarded to the company.
The Russian state news agency Interfax reported that Shamarin had pleaded guilty. Since 2020, he has commanded the Signal Corps of the Russian Armed Forces. This special branch of the military is responsible for military communications, including the transmission of orders from the battlefield command.
The court also stripped him of his military rank and banned him from working in the state administration for seven years.
The series of scandals - the largest in the Russian military in years - includes criminal cases against former deputy defense ministers Timur Ivanov, General Pavel Popov and General Dmitry Bulgakov. They all worked under General Sergei Shoigu, who was defense minister until he was replaced in a departmental reshuffle last year and transferred to a new position as secretary of Russia's Security Council.
In another similar case, the former governor of the Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, was arrested yesterday and charged with embezzling funds intended for the construction of defensive facilities along the border with Ukraine. Smirnov was in charge of the Kursk region's administration when Ukrainian forces crossed the border in a major offensive in August. Ukraine seized part of the Kursk region and managed to hold it for months, but Russian forces managed to push out most of the Ukrainian troops in a counteroffensive.