MOSCOW, February 18 - RAPSI. Russia’s state-run hydropower holding company RusHydro is to hold an internal audit into a 1 billion ruble ($33 million) fraud uncovered at the company, RusHydro CEO Yevgeny Dod said on Monday.

The Interior Ministry reported on Sunday police had exposed embezzlement of state funds worth 1 billion rubles granted for the construction of the Zagorsk Hydroelectric Pumped Storage Power Plant-2 in the Moscow Region. The funds were embezzled through schemes involving a number of fly-by-night firms, it said.

Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev to investigate embezzlement at RusHydro.

“All cases of dishonesty exposed during the check will be immediately transferred to the competent bodies while personal relationships, the record of work and previous merits – all this will be annulled,” Dod told a meeting of the company’s management board.

“During this check, we’ll not only clean our ranks of parasites but we’ll also cleanse the ranks of our contractors and subcontractors. If any dirt is discovered in the work… no one can count on any indulgence and neither previous merits nor posts will help,” he said.

Dod said the company must set up a transparent mechanism for financing all construction sites, so “such criticism never arises again.”

Putin had previously blamed Dod for failing to help investigate the case. “You should be fighting with your teeth to recover these funds,” Putin told Dod at a meeting of the presidential energy commission.