Former Deputy Minister of Transport Igor Chalik was detained in a case of embezzlement

Igor Chalik, the former deputy Minister of Transport, who served as acting head of the head research Institute of Civil Aviation of the State Research Institute of Aviation since December 2023, was placed under criminal investigation for embezzlement on an especially large scale (Part 4 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), three sources told Izvestia in law enforcement agencies.

In this case, large-scale searches took place in Moscow on February 25: at the place of residence of Igor Chalik, at the State Research Institute of the State Aviation Administration, the Federal Air Transport Agency and the Ministry of Transport, one of the interlocutors said. Chalik himself was detained by security forces in his own apartment on Sofiyskaya Embankment opposite the Kremlin. After the investigative actions, Chalik was taken to the South-Western Investigative Department by transport for interrogation, and then placed in a temporary detention facility for 48 hours.

According to investigators, in the second and third quarters of 2024, as acting head of the State Research Institute of the State Duma, Igor Chalik systematically illegally wrote out bonuses to his salary of 750 thousand rubles by including himself in the lists of awarded and rewarded employees. He independently determined the amount of his bonus at 740 thousand rubles for April, May, June and September, and for July — 1.2 million rubles. He then approved the bonus orders and instructed his subordinates to send them to the accounting department, after which the funds were transferred from the institute's current account to Chalik's bank card. In total, in April-September, he embezzled almost 4.2 million rubles belonging to the State Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Natural Resources, causing particularly large material damage to the enterprise, whose property is owned by the Federal Air Transport Agency and the Federal Property Management Agency.

According to one of the sources, during the interrogation, Igor Chalik admitted his guilt, but partially — he confessed to the fact of writing himself bonuses, but he did not agree with the amount presented. On Thursday, investigators plan to go to the Dorogomilovsky court of Moscow with a petition for the election of a preventive measure in the form of detention in a pre-trial detention center. According to this article, the former deputy minister faces up to 10 years in prison with a fine of up to 1 million rubles.

Igor Chalik headed the State Research Institute of Aviation from December 2023 to the end of January 2025, before that, for three years (from January 2021), he was Deputy Minister of Transport in charge of aviation in the ministry. Prior to the Ministry of Transport, he worked at Aeroflot, where he was first a pilot of Tu-134 and Il-86 aircraft, then transferred to the Airbus A310, after which he became an instructor pilot, and soon the commander of the Airbus A330 flight squad. From 2011 until his departure from Aeroflot to the Ministry of Transport, Igor Chalik held the position of Deputy General Director — Flight Director of the airline.

The news is being updated.