ST. PETERSBURG, February 5 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov) – An abuse of office case against Viktor Kudrin, ex-CEO of a contractor of the construction of Kresty, the largest detention center in Europe, has been forwarded to the Kolpinsky District Court of St. Petersburg for consideration, RAPSI has learnt from the Investigative Committee’s St. Petersburg Main Investigations Directorate.

Investigation is completed.

Kudrin initially was charged with giving bribe but later was released from liability because he voluntary said about his business relations with the ordering customer, the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region penitentiary authorities. Later, an investigator said that the defendant was charged with embezzlement. However, now, according to the indictment, he is only accused of abuse of office.

According to investigators, Kudrin pleaded guilty.

Case papers read that from 2007 to 2015 the Federal Penitentiary Service’s Main Directorate for St. Petersburg Leningrad Region and the General Construction Company then headed by Kudrin signed state contracts and additional agreements on the construction of the detention facility. The customer transferred over 12.2 billion rubles to the contractor as payment for the works.

However, the contractor failed to execute works in full in violation of the contract’s terms.

Several criminal cases have been opened over the construction of Kresty detention facilities.

Another contractor, CEO of Petroinvest company Ruslan Khamkhokov has been convicted of bribing and abuse of office and given a 5-year suspended sentence.

Ex-deputy chief of the FSIN St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region directorate Sergey Moiseyenko is currently a defendant in two criminal cases, over receipt of bribes amounting to 710 million rubles ($11.3 million) from Kudrin and Khamkhokov and over the murder of his subordinate. Colonel Nikolay Chernov, the head of the technical supervision department for the FSIN’s St. Petersburg Directorate, was murdered in order to hide corruption crimes that took place during construction of a new detention center in the region.

Ex-deputy director of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) Nikolay Barinov has received a 3.5-year prison sentence for taking about 110 million rubles (about $2 million) in bribes from the detention center construction contractors.