Russia arrests another general on bribery charges
Al Jazeera
Authorities arrest Lieutenant-General Vadim Shamarin, latest in a string of bribery arrests of high-ranking officials.
Marking the fourth arrest of a high-ranking military official in a month, Russia has detained Lieutenant-General Vadim Shamarin, deputy head of the army’s general staff, on suspicion of large-scale bribe-taking.
A military court ordered on Wednesday that Shamarin, who also heads the Ministry of Defence’s main communications directorate, be jailed for two months, according to the state-run TASS news agency.
Shamarin’s detention follows the arrests of other top defence officials as part of an effort to stamp out corruption relating to the awarding of lucrative military contracts.
Earlier this month, Major-General Ivan Popov, a former top commander in Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, and Lieutenant-General Yuri Kuznetsov, head of the Defence Ministry’s personnel directorate, were arrested on bribery charges.
In April, Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov, a close associate of former Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, was also arrested for alleged bribery. President Vladimir Putin later dismissed Shoigu as defence minister soon after his inauguration in May, replacing him with economist Andrei Belousov.
