Russian Investigators Find Legal Violations in Defense Procurement by Roscosmos

The Russian Prosecutors have detected 1,700 systemic legal violations in the work of State Space Corporation, Roscosmos during the period between 2017 and first half of 2018.

"Documents on the activities conducted by the previous management of Roscosmos had been reviewed. Systemic violations of the law had been detected, particularly regarding the state’s defense procurement, with research and development work having been conducted improperly. This also concerns the area linked to engineering, and where work on registering patents on intellectual property is carried out, they had been often disrupted. This includes the deadline of defense missions, where evidence of poor-quality products being supplied had been revealed," TASS reported Official Spokesman Alexander Kurennoy as saying.

Furthermore, prosecutors had revealed violations of procurement legislation, namely when it comes to pricing and import substitution. "The situation in the rocket and space industry in general was deemed unsatisfactory since the corporation hadn’t enacted the required controls for the appropriate expenditure of budget funds by all of the enterprises’ branches," Kurennoy stressed.

"Based on the violations uncovered, the prosecutors had made 302 submissions with over 200 officials having been brought up for (disciplinary and administrative) liability. Furthermore, the prosecutors had sent 44 materials to investigating agencies in accordance with Article 37 of the Russian Criminal Code with 16 criminal cases already initiated," he added