MOSCOW, April 21 (RAPSI, Diana Gutsul) – The Presnensky District Court of Moscow has given Yekaterina Smetanova, one of the main defendants in the case on embezzlement at the Defense Ministry’s subsidiary Oboronservis, a 4-year suspended sentence with a 5-year probation period, the court’s spokesperson Nina Yurkova told RAPSI on Thursday.

Smetanova was also fined 6,499, 655 rubles ($98,425), the sum equal to single total of commercial bribery.

Smetanova has been charged with embezzlement and commercial bribery. She has pleaded guilty to the crimes of which she has been accused, and provided detailed and consistent testimony exposing the other individuals involved in the crime. She has been released under restriction notice. Case against her was singled out and considered separately.

The corruption scandal broke out at the Defense Ministry in 2012 and led to the resignation of then Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and Yevgeniya Vasilyeva.

Serdyukov was charged with negligence. Investigators claimed that his actions or inactions resulted in damages to the state estimated at 56 million rubles (about $848,000) by ordering army personnel to build a private road to a Caspian Sea resort owned by his brother-in-law.

However, the Russian media reported in late December 2013 that the criminal probe into Serdyukov’s actions was closed. Serdyukov's lawyer Genrikh Padva said later that his client was pardoned under an amnesty program.

On May 8, 2015 the Presnensky District Court of Moscow sentenced Yevgeniya Vasilyeva, an aide to Serdyukov, to five years in prison for her involvement in corruption cases at the Defense Ministry.

In late August, a court in the Vladimir Region released Vasilyeva on parole.