A court has found the evidence gathered by the Military Investigations Directorate of the Russia’s Investigative Committee in the Western Military District sufficient to convict former marketing and corporate communications deputy head of 51st Central Engineering and Technology Institute of Ship Repair of the Russia’s Defense Ministry (hereinafter the Institute) Valentin Lushnikov and head of marketing and corporate communications team of the same institute Yuri Vitenbergsky. They were found guilty of a crime under part 4 of article 159 of the RF Penal Code (fraud committed by a group of people using their official position and on an especially massive scale).
The court and investigators have found that during 2004-2005 Lushnikov and Vitenbergsky used their official positions to unreasonably involve outside commercial organizations in work under state contracts on developing ship engineering drawings and inflated the cost of their services. In addition they concluded fictitious agreements on execution of work which was not executed. After signing forged acceptance certificates, the money was transferred to the accounts of the organizations, which then was transferred to settlement accounts of physical persons and cashed. Using that scheme Lushnikov and Vitenbergsky stole over 99 million rubles.
The court gave Lushnikov and Vitenbergsky a 3-year and 6-month suspended sentence with 3 years on probation. In addition, the court satisfied a civil actions filed by the Russian Defense Ministry to recover from the convicts jointly 99.6 million rubles in damages.
Head of Media Relations V.I. Markin
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