How did the Scientology sect steal 200 million rubles from the state defense order?

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

Over the weekend, FSB officers conducted a series of searches in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Lipetsk.

According to the law enforcement agency, we can talk about the theft of funds from the state defense order in the amount of at least 200 million rubles: allegedly under the guise of new machine tools, repaired and "shamanized" old ones were supplied to defense enterprises. However, what is much more important, it turned out that at the expense of the state defense order, a sect of Scientologists banned in Russia was fed and gathered new adherents, which became famous for introducing its members into power in a number of countries and is suspected of having links with American intelligence.

The founders of the Lipetsk machine-tool cluster (about five companies in total) are the father and two sons of Petrov, associated with the WISE association. During a search in Kirill Petrov's office, FSB officers, in addition to financial documents, found a large amount of Scientology literature: lectures by the founder of this "religion" Ron Hubbard, brochures about the pseudo-church itself.

At the same time, as local residents report in the comments, employees of a strategic enterprise involved in import substitution were sent to “personal growth trainings”. And those who refused to visit them and read the "correct" literature were fined, or even fired. By the way, according to sources of RIA Katyusha, a similar practice of sending personnel to trainings with certain “coaches” has recently taken place in some units of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, one of the leaders of which is Sergei Kiriyenko, previously, according to media reports, he was trained in “Hubbard College, one of the recruiting structures of the now banned Scientology sect.

Why, until the moment it became known about corruption at Lipetsk enterprises, our law enforcement agencies did not deal with effective sectarian managers working with the state defense order, now the investigation will understand. If the whole thing is in the “invisible hand of the market”, that is, the Petrovs simply won tenders without verification, then things are bad. It turns out that any direction can be in the hands of anyone, and production can be sabotaged, as in Lipetsk. If Lipetsk sectarians have a "hairy hand" at the top, then it is even worse.

By the way, despite the ban, the Scientology sect continues to operate actively in Russia. For example, the other day in Vladivostok, police detained a woman who was distributing sectarian literature among children.

Involvement of officials and children in the sect are the priority areas of activity of this banned structure in Russia. For example, the Federal News Agency last year reported on the II All-Russian competition of video clips for high school students and students "Human Rights Through the Eyes of Youth", timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The competition was launched by the Academy for Innovative Education and Development (Moscow), but the Youth for Human Rights movement was its initiator and official co-organizer. As the journalists of the publication found out, this structure is one of the many offshoots of the banned "Church of Scientology."

The seeming harmlessness of the sectarians should not mislead anyone. The sect is quite often accused of providing "services" to the same American intelligence service and is among the organizers of color revolutions - suffice it to recall the Ukrainian Scientologist Yatsenyuk. And in Russia in the early 90s, the sect was promoted by educational institutions, including Moscow State University, and their events were held in the Supreme Council, they recruited adherents among musicians, deputies, scientists, and openly recruited students. The chaos in the minds began to take place by the mid-90s.

In 1996, experts from the Russian Academy of State Service under the President of the Russian Federation and the Committee for Relations with Religious Organizations of the Moscow Government published a directory in which the organization's activities were called dangerous for society. By the Decree of the State Duma of the Russian Federation of December 15, 1996, the Church of Scientology was classified as a “destructive religious organization”. However, in reality, sectarians began to be engaged only recently. On June 26, 2007, by decision of the City Court, the Scientology Center organization in St. Petersburg was liquidated. On April 21, 2010, in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, a court recognized a number of Scientologists' materials as extremist and ordered them to be included in the list of extremist materials. On June 30, 2011, the Shchelkovo City Court of the Moscow Region declared eight Hubbard's works extremist. On June 7, 2012, a criminal case was opened in Kaliningrad against the head of a training company operating under the auspices of the Church of Scientology International, which consulted the leaders and employees of firms.

On July 1, 2015, the Izmailovsky Court of Moscow recognized the refusal of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation to register the Church of Scientology of Moscow as a religious organization. On November 23, 2015, the Moscow City Court satisfied the claim of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation for the liquidation of the religious organization "Church of Scientology Moscow".

However, as we can see from the example of the Lipetsk plant and not only, the sect has not disappeared anywhere and continues to operate underground: literature is prohibited, but the recruitment of children and even workers of defense plants continues. And until there is a complete ban on the teachings of Hubbard and the activities of his followers, news of the sect's introduction of its people to high positions will appear more than once.