MOSCOW, March 26 - RAPSI. The police stopped illegal activities of a group of the Defense Ministry's high-ranking officials suspected of arranging illegal sanitary landfill in the Moscow Region, the Interior Ministry's Economic Security Department reported on Monday.

The environmental damage is estimated at 13 billion rubles ($442 million).

The illegal household waste landfill was organized in Solnechnogorsk District, Moscow Region.

"In 2006, the Defense Ministry officials illegally transferred 18 hectares of forest owned by the ministry to a commercial company. The forest was consequently cut, the land was used as a landfill," the report reads.

According to the Federal Agency for Water Resources, the toxicant concentration in the nearby water exceeds the maximum acceptable level by 200 times.

Investigators opened a criminal case regarding damage to the ground, illegal forest devastation and negligence. The offences are punishable by up to a million ruble fine ($34,000).