News

A court has recognized the evidence gathered by the Kamchatka Territory investigating bodies of Russia’s Investigative Committee have finished investigating a criminal case against Kamchatka Territory Sport and Tourism ex-Minister Viktor Kravchenko and businessman Valentin Mulyukin. The official was charged with a crime under part 4 of article 160 of the RF Penal Code (embezzlement using an official position on a very large scale) and the businessman with a crime under part 5 of article 33, part 4 of article 160 (complicity in embezzlement).

The court and investigators have revealed that in late 2011 Kravchenko and the businessman during execution of a state contract on supplying hockey gears for youth teams of Kamchatka Territory, misappropriated funds of the Kamchatka Territory budget by deliberately and groundlessly overstating the initial price of the contract and illegally giving advantage in the auction to Mulyukin, which prevented the overstated price from having been brought down. The businessman used requirements specification for the future contract he had been provided with by the minister and developed by coaches of sport schools who wanted to spend budgetary funds to buy high-quality hockey gears for children.

Mulyukin conspired with Kravchenko to change the object of delivery by putting in the auction documents cheaper hockey gear with the simplest technical features, but without revising the initial price of the contract.

As a result students of several municipal sport schools received cheaper gears including items that can’t be properly used (hockey helmets without protection masks which the school staff then attached from old hockey helmets, a molder for ski boots, but not hockey ones, vests of wrong size and others) and is not used by teenagers. The difference between the gears supplied under the state contract and factual expenses of the Kamchatka Territory budget stood at over 7 million rubles.

The court has sentenced Kravchenko to 4 years to be served in a minimum-security penal colony and a fine of 500 thousand rubles. The court also banned him from taking any positions in state bodies or local governments connected with management or economy for two years. Mulyukin got a sentence of 3 years to be served in a minimum-security penal colony and a fine of 500 thousand rubles.