The investigation requested 17 years for the ex-official of the Ministry of Defense for smuggling timber to China

The former head of the Department of Property Relations of the Ministry of Defense Dmitry Kurakin, who also held the post of deputy chairman of the government of the Moscow region, the prosecutor's office requested 17 years in prison, TASS reports with reference to court materials.

"I ask you to impose a punishment on Kurakin in the form of 17 years in a strict regime colony with a fine of five times the amount of a bribe in the amount of 500 million rubles and deprivation of the right to hold positions related to the performance of organizational and administrative functions in state bodies, as well as in The Armed Forces," the document says.

Kurakin is under investigation due to allegations of illegal deforestation at the time when he headed the department of the military department (2012-2017). He is charged with receiving a bribe on an especially large scale (part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code), abuse of authority (part 3 of Article 285), illegal manufacture (part 1 of Article 223) and acquisition (part 1 of Article 222) of weapons, etc.

According to the prosecution, since 2014, Kurakin, using false documents, organized a massive deforestation of healthy forests on the territory of military units of the Western Military District under the guise of sanitary. Then the forest was sold to China. Plots with cut down trees were sold to entrepreneurs for landfills. The UK estimated the damage from the actions of the official and his accomplices at more than 4 billion rubles.

Kurakin came to the Department of the Ministry of Defense to replace Evgenia Vasilyeva, a defendant in the Oboronservice case, because of which Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov was fired. She was convicted of fraud in the sale of assets of the military department for five years in prison, but left the colony on parole after spending a little more than a month there.

In addition to Kurakin, his former first deputy Vladislav Kholodkov and the head of Oboronspecresurs Maxim Ana are being investigated. They are suspected of receiving a bribe on a particularly large scale. The prosecutor's office demands that they be sent to a strict regime colony for 14 years with a fine of three times the amount of a bribe (369 million rubles), RBC clarifies.