A Russian deputy defense minister has been arrested for accepting a “large-scale” bribe, the country’s top law enforcement investigators said Tuesday.
The brief statement from the Investigative Committee revealed few details about the reasons that led to the arrest of Deputy Minister Timur Ivanov. But the law he is accused of violating involves accepting a bribe “on a particularly large scale” of more than a million rubles, or more than $10,000.
The Defense Ministry has not commented on the investigation.
Mr. Ivanov, deputy defense minister since 2016, had long been in charge of military construction projects, including most recently the huge contracts awarded for the reconstruction of the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, occupied by Russia. devastated by Russian attacks shortly after the February 2022 invasion.
He was also responsible for the construction of Patriot Park, a military-themed space outside Moscow that featured weapons displays and a Russian Orthodox cathedral that sought to present the experiences of the Russian armed forces in a sacred light. He was awarded the Order of Merit to the Fatherland several times.
Mr. Ivanov was known as a protégé of Sergei K. Shoigu, the Russian defense minister and close aide to President Vladimir V. Putin.
The circumstances of the detention of a deputy minister with such high-ranking connections were not immediately clear. But in the past, such arrests were due to the disgraced person running afoul of the business interests of the FSB, Russian security services, or a construction oligarch with even more powerful connections.
“He is not an exception in terms of side activities and unexplained wealth,” said Dara Massicot, a Russian military expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “To meet this kind of end of career, you have to have crossed paths with someone.”
Images and reports of the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by Mr. Ivanov and his wife, at a level far beyond the reach of a government salary, have been circulating in Russia for years. A investigation in 2022 by the Anti-Corruption Foundationan organization founded by opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, claimed the couple’s purchases included a Rolls-Royce, a ring worth $104,000, and designer clothing, as well as house rentals vacation rentals and high-end yachts on the French Riviera.
The foundation and various news agencies reported that Mr. Ivanov and his wife, Svetlana, entered into a sham divorce in June 2022 so that she could continue to travel around Europe even after he was subjected to the European sanctions.
On Tuesday, government supporters and pro-war news channels were quick to reference the couple’s notorious spending habits shortly after Mr. Ivanov’s detention was announced.
Sergei Markov, a Russian conservative political commentator, said the idea that bribes were limited to a million rubles was laughable. “No one believes this,” he wrote, while emphasizing that the accusation was tantamount to accepting large bribes. “The deputy minister committed not only a crime, but a serious crime. A signal to everyone: don’t defend him.”
In another development on Tuesday, the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow diocese announced on its website that the Rev. Dmitry Safronov, the parish priest who gave Mr. Navalny’s funeral prayers, would be barred from most public religious functions during three years. .
The announcement did not specify an official reason for the sanction. But Church analysts have speculated online that it could only be to preside over the funeral of the leader of the opposition, who died in February in a Russian prison. The Russian government reluctantly approved a funeral at a Moscow cemetery after a lengthy standoff with Mr Navalny’s mother.
Milana Mazaiva reports contributed.
