Five people were arrested in the case of embezzlement of 238 million rubles during the purchase of gas masks.

In St. Petersburg, the court granted the investigation's request for the arrest of five suspects in the theft of 238.2 million rubles allocated from the state budget for the supply of gas masks. This was announced on March 18 by the joint press service of the city courts.

"The Oktyabrsky District Court of St. Petersburg issued a decision on the election of a preventive measure in the form of detention in respect of Oleg Sayfulin, Vasily Azhoychik, Vitaly Markov, Oleg Dmitriev and Sergei Zinoviev, accused and suspected of committing a crime under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation," the Telegram channel said..

According to the investigation, from September 2023 to October 2024, the department controlled by Sayfulin agreed with several private companies to purchase gas masks that did not meet the quality requirements.

A total of 238,230,665 rubles were transferred to suppliers for the delivered goods, which the defendants disposed of at their own discretion.

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Illegal payments amounted to 4.2 million, the investigation believes, and almost left employees of the State Research Institute of Civil Aviation without salaries.

Earlier, on March 12, the general director of one of the enterprises of the road industry of the Zaporizhia region was detained on suspicion of grand theft. It was established that the defendant overestimated the amount of work performed under the state contract, which led to the embezzlement of budget funds on an especially large scale. The total amount of damage exceeded 13 million rubles. A criminal case has been opened on this fact.