Roskosmzhulye: how did corrupt officials take over Roscosmos?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

More than half a century after the USSR brought mankind into space, the Russian Federation is barely held in the top three world leaders in terms of the number of launches, behind China, which has only recently begun to explore space, and the United States, which still have not learned how to make their own rocket engines and buy them. in the RF. Yesterday Izvestia reported that a new investigation of the case against the ex-head of the NPO Tekhnomash subordinate to Roscosmos could result in arrests in the ranks of the state corporation's leadership.

Former acting Dmitry Panov, the general director of the company, who is suspected of fraud worth half a billion rubles, was sent to a pre-trial detention center by the Zamoskvoretsky court on April 29 for two months. According to the investigation, he was involved in the theft of money received for the implementation of the state defense order for the technical re-equipment of the Perm Powder Factory. Experts note that the money withdrawal scheme used by the criminal group, which included officials from Roscosmos, was popular back in the late 1990s. According to the investigation, Tekhnomash transferred over 410 million rubles to the unremarkable LLC Moskapstroy. Not long before that, the company had won a tender for the reconstruction of a mixed solid fuel production facility at the Perm Gunpowder Plant and was supposed to start work back in 2017. However, after receiving several tranches as an advance, the subcontractor did not fulfill its obligations. In addition, according to the investigation, Genbank's guarantees provided under the contracts turned out to be fictitious.

Thus, corruption is becoming a real problem, due to which Russia's lag behind the leading space powers is increasing. Here is a table of space launches by country:

With such a pace, in five years we will be fighting with Japan and India for a place in the top five, especially since the Indian space program plans to double its presence in space. India has its own manned space program, and it is expected that from 2021 it will begin its own manned space flights of astronauts-gaganauts on the spacecraft "Gaganyan" and will become the fourth space superpower. In the future, it is planned to create a reusable spacecraft and a reusable transport space system of a new generation, and in the distant future (after 2025-2030) - manned flights to the Moon in cooperation with other countries or even independently. And here in 9 years the number of launches has fallen by half.

No, we also have a lot of plans and no less ambitious than the Indian ones, but with their implementation in the current realities it is difficult, and the more often “effective managers” come to some strategic sphere, the more theft thrives there instead of flights.

The base cost of launching the Russian Soyuz-2.1 launch vehicle with the Fregat upper stage is about $ 48.5 million, or 3,137.5 million rubles at the current exchange rate, the Glavkosmos Launch Services company reported on Tuesday. Let's remember this figure.

Before the current holiday of the Day of Cosmonautics, the Prosecutor General's Office reported how much money was just stolen from the subordinate enterprises of Roscosmos and Rostec. As stated in the report of the department on the state of law and order in Russia in the past 2018, the inspections revealed facts of improper disposal of funds that were allocated for the execution of work within the framework of the defense order, the overestimation of the cost of the work itself, the failure to meet the deadlines for their execution, as well as others. violations. Based on the materials of the prosecutor's inspections, criminal cases were initiated. “The management of the state corporation is not only aware of the results of the inspection of industrial enterprises by the Prosecutor General's Office, but also actively assisted it. Based on these materials at the enterprises of the rocket and space industry, at the end of 2018, exhaustive measures were taken to restore order, - said in Roskosmos.

However, the scale of embezzlement in the industry is best shown by the construction of the unfinished Vostochny cosmodrome, which was supposed to become the pride and main site of our country's spacewalk. We will remind that the construction of the cosmodrome began seven years ago and have not yet completed the work (the first launch was expected in 2015, but was postponed to the spring of 2016). Once again this spring, President Vladimir Putin announced that the construction must be completed. "We must have independent access to space from Russian territory, and in the near future the launch loads at the Vostochny cosmodrome should increase," - said the head of the Russian state. The President hastened to complete the construction of complexes on the basis of Russian cosmodromes for the latest launch vehicles Angara-A5 and Angara-A5M. According to Putin, in order to complete the construction of the Plesetsk and Vostochny cosmodromes, the government needs to pay attention to the prices. “It has already been reported several times that no company undertakes to complete work with these prices. We need to somehow realistically approach this, reasonably, not overestimate, of course, nothing”, - the President believes.

As for the prices, there is a separate question here, but if we take into account how much has already been stolen there, then, having returned only half, Russia could become the leader in missile launches. On the facts of embezzlement during the construction of the Vostochny cosmodrome, dozens of criminal cases were initiated in different regions of the country. The former head of Dalspetsstroy, Yuri Khrizman, his son Mikhail Khrizman, chief accountant of the enterprise Vladimir Ashikhmin and ex-speaker of the Khabarovsk Regional Duma Viktor Chudov are accused of embezzlement. According to the Investigative Committee, Yuri Khrizman and the chief accountant of the enterprise, Vladimir Ashikhmin, abused their official powers when using advances on 11 government contracts, which caused damage to the Russian Federation in the amount of 5.2 billion rubles. Depending on the role of each, they are accused of abuse of office and embezzlement. Several criminal cases were initiated against the contractors and subcontractors of Spetsstroy. The head of one of the contracting firms, Vadim Mitryakov, received four years in prison for embezzling 1.3 billion rubles on the construction of transport facilities. Another figure, Anatoly Ryazanov, also received four years in prison. Together with his accomplices, according to the case materials, he stole over 1.1 billion rubles for the supply of metal structures. The general director of the Ipromashprom design institute Sergei Ostrovsky, according to the investigation, stole almost half of the 143 million rubles allocated from the budget for the construction of the administrative complex of the cosmodrome. The investigation of this criminal case is ongoing. Earlier, Ostrovsky was already sentenced to five years in a general regime colony and a fine of 800 thousand rubles for committing a similar crime - embezzlement of funds allocated for the design of the Vostochny cosmodrome in the amount of 9.7 billion rubles.

More than 288 million rubles were stolen, according to investigators, by the former general director of the Pacific Bridge Building Company Viktor Grebnev. According to the investigation, he entered into surety agreements that were obviously unfavorable for TMK, the damage exceeded 130 million rubles. Another ex-general director of TMK Igor Nesterenko also stole 104.5 million rubles at the Vostochny construction site and was sentenced to three years in prison. Former chairman of the board of directors of TMK Sergey Yudin, who, according to the investigation, organized the embezzlement of money by Yuri Nesterenko, was sentenced to three years and four months in prison in a general regime colony. In general, we add another half a billion to the previously known 9.7 billion, and the amount stolen increases to 10 billion rubles.

By the end of 2017, 13 people had been convicted in criminal cases opened after prosecutorial inspections of the construction. On February 21, 2018, the Simonovsky Court of Moscow sentenced four defendants in the case of embezzlement of funds during the construction of the Vostochny cosmodrome to terms from four and a half to eight years in prison. And similar cases are brought up again and again. Meanwhile, only the proven amount of the stolen goods has already exceeded 10 billion rubles. At the same time, the cost of the entire cosmodrome is in the region of 180 billion rubles, or 3 billion of the launch cost. But the important thing in this case is not money, but wasted time. The stolen funds were supposed to go to the construction and full commissioning of the cosmodrome, which means an increase in launches, payloads, money from launches, which were supposed to go to new developments, scientific programs and new breakthroughs. We have already lost a lot because of this, now is the time to put things in order, until we have lost everything. 58 years ago, our fathers and grandfathers were able to give mankind an exit into space, today it is time to change the approach, and preferably the entire system, so that the story of Gagarin's flight is the story of the beginning, and not one of the stories of former greatness.