Former Deputy Defense Minister Pavel Popov faces up to 10 years in prison if charged and convicted following his detention on suspicion of fraud. Popov has been remanded in custody until at least October 29.
A former Defense Ministry official was detained in connection with a fraud case on Thursday. The case involves the latest major arrest in what appears to be a wide-ranging investigation into abuse of power within the military leadership of Russia.
Former deputy defense minister Pavel Popov faces up to 10 years in prison if charged and convicted following his detention on suspicion of fraud, Russian state news agencies reported, adding that he has been remanded in custody until at least October 29.
The prosecution of Mr Popov concerns commercial activities carried out in a sprawling Moscow park, sometimes called the “Military Disneyland” from Russia.
Patriot Park, a pet project of former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, is designed to inspire national pride in younger generations and features Soviet and Russian weapons. It includes a shooting range, an air base, museums, a conference center and a massive khaki-colored Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which features mosaics of Soviet and Russian soldiers. According to the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin personally donated money to commission the church’s main icon.
Mr Popov is the eighth senior military figure to be arrested on charges of fraud, corruption or abuse of power in recent months.including Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, who was arrested on corruption charges in April and later dismissed. The arrests began shortly before Putin replaced Shoigu with an economist, Andrei Belousov.
Analysts say the arrests are a sign that Shoigou’s associates are being pushed out of power and that The most blatant corruption within the Ministry of Defense will no longer be tolerated.
According to the national news agency Tass, Mr Popov was responsible for the development and maintenance of Patriot Park and is accused of renovating his own properties in the Moscow region at the park’s expense. He is accused of fraud alongside the park’s director and Major General Vladimir Chesterov, deputy of the Defense Ministry’s innovation department, both of whom have already been detained.
According to Svetlana Petrenko of the Russian Investigative Committee, Mr Popov forced companies with contracts with Patriot Park to carry out work on his “outside-city apartments without paying them”.
In addition to a plot of land with houses outside Moscow, Popov and his family own “numerous properties in prestigious areas of Moscow, the Moscow region and the Krasnodar region” in southern Russia, Svetlana Petrenko said. These properties are worth a total of 500 million rubles ($5.5 million), and investigators are determining whether they were acquired legally, Petrenko told Tass.
“Internal wars”
Corruption within the Defense Ministry “is so widespread” that the choice of who is arrested will be driven by “internal warfare,” said Richard Connolly, a specialist in the Russian economy and military at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
The arrests “send a message in a strategically important area. But they also offer an opportunity to settle some scores,” he said.
Mr Popov served as deputy defence minister from 2013 until June, when he was dismissed by presidential decree. His arrest comes shortly after that of former deputy defence minister General Dmitry Bulgakov, who was arrested in Moscow in July.
According to Tass, Bulgakov is accused of large-scale embezzlement. He allegedly oversaw the provision of food rations to soldiers, which were allegedly overpriced and of poor quality. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.
Mr Bulgakov was deputy defence minister from 2008 until his dismissal in 2022. He was then responsible for logistics and, although the ministry said he was taking another job, the move was seen as punishment for failures in supporting operations in Ukraine.