Vasilyev is charged under Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code for receiving a bribe on an especially large scale, and Fontanka, citing a source, writes about the total amount of bribes at 80 million rubles.
This is already the second head of the complex to become a defendant in a criminal case involving embezzlement: the former CEO of the park, Vyacheslav Akhmedov, was convicted and received five years in a penal colony. Vasilyev took over Patriot only at the beginning of the year.
Before that, he was governor of the Kirov Region in 2016–2022, headed Rosreestr in 2014–2016, worked as an auditor of the Accounts Chamber in 2010–2013, and was a senator in 2004–2010. In the 1980s, Vasilyev served in the KGB in the same directorate as Vladimir Putin and himself said that this acquaintance was “not one-sided”.
Several days before his detention, first deputy director Sergey Fedosov and deputy director for operations Alexey Pavlyukov were detained. Fedosov was charged with fraud on an especially large scale, Pavlyukov with receiving a bribe on an especially large scale, and both are in custody.
The CEO of Hermes, Evgeny Mariev, whom investigators consider the bribe giver, was also detained; he was placed under house arrest. In April, the park’s deputy director Vitaly Melimuk was also detained, and he too was charged with receiving a bribe from Mariev.
According to investigators, in the case of Vyacheslav Akhmedov, former deputy head of the Main Directorate for Innovative Development of the Ministry of Defense Vladimir Shesterov, and former deputy defense minister Pavel Popov, the case concerned false information in documents about work at the park and the theft of more than 25 million rubles in 2022–2024. In Popov’s case, the illegal employment of people at the park and their exemption from work in 2020–2024 were also involved, and investigators estimated the damage at more than 8 million rubles; Popov received 19 years in a penal colony, but later the court reduced the sentence to 10 years.
Another case is connected with the Kronstadt branch of the Ministry of Defense Museum-Temple Complex. Sources of Kommersant linked to it the arrest at the end of September of Sergei Nikitushkin, head of the training and material base department of the Main Directorate for Combat Training of the Armed Forces, whom, according to RBC, is accused of receiving a bribe on an especially large scale.
