Vyacheslav Kravchenko is suspected of Swindling.
Officers of the MIA Main Directorate in Moscow have detained former Deputy Head of the Ministry of Energy, who supervises energy issues in the department, for 48 hours. This is reported by RBC referring to a source, who claims that the ex-official is suspected of fraud committed by an organized group or on a large scale.
Oksana Grinkevich, the wife of former Deputy Head of the Ministry of Energy Department Egor Grinkevich, was detained as part of the same case.
The news agency’s source said that the FSB officers together with the police had searched Kravchenko’s apartment, as well as visited six addresses of Sovet Rynka NP personnel department, where Kravchenko worked in the period from 2012-2013. Oksana Grinkevich's place had also been searched, her friend said.
All defendants are currently being questioned by the Main Investigations Directorate. It was impossible to contact Grinkevich; Kravchenko did not answer calls and messages.
The criminal case, under which Kravchenko was detained, was separated last year from another criminal case, initiated in February 2017 against ex-Head of Sovet Rynka NP Dmitry Ponomarev and Oksana Grinkevich, a source close to one of the security structures says. The fact that a new case was initiated from the previous one is also confirmed by a source close to one of the defendants.
According to the investigation, Ponomarev, Grinkevich, and a number of unidentified persons have caused Sovet Rynka NP a 3-million-ruble ($45,600) damage with their actions. In particular, the organization employed Grinkevich for a fictitious position; in fact, she did not fulfill her duties, but received salaries and bonuses, which the defendants then distributed among themselves.
A new criminal case was severed from other charges to find Grinkevich and Ponomarev’s accomplices, who had not been previously established, one of RBC sources said.
Kravchenko, who has worked in the electric power industry for more than ten years, left the post of deputy minister at his own will last November. However, the dismissal was connected, among other things, with complaints against the official on the part of the security forces, a friend of deputy minister and a source close to the FSB explained.