MOSCOW, June 4 (RAPSI) - The police have exposed new cases involving the embezzlement of government funds allocated for the GLONASS navigation program, the Moscow Police Department said on Tuesday.

The Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), which was officially launched in 1993, is the Russian counterpart to the US GPS. It provides data for the real-time positioning and speed of surface, sea and air objects to within an accuracy of one meter.

"We have established additional facts," the police reported. "At least 15 million rubles ($468,020) have been embezzled with the assistance of the NPP Metromark Infosystems research company's management." The general director of Metromark Infosystems was arrested on May 29.

On May 16, the Moscow police reported that Synertech's management had stolen at least 85 million rubles ($2.7 million), allegedly as compensation for a GLONASS research project. Synertech is a joint venture of EADS Astrium and Tesat Spacecom with Russian Space Systems.

The Interior Ministry earlier reported the embezzlement of over 565 million rubles ($18 million) in federal budget funds that were allocated for GLONASS. Criminal proceedings were initiated. The ministry suspected Russian Space Systems' management of concluding research contracts with commercial organizations that had neither the equipment nor the qualified personnel to implement them.

The GLONASS program was initiated in the 1970s but underwent a radical revamp in 2001. The 24 satellites comprising the system were put into orbit by 2010 after several costly malfunctions and launch failures by carrier rockets. The program has cost 140 billion rubles ($4.4 billion) to implement to date, and its budget for 2012-2020 stands at a further 326 billion rubles ($10 billion).