The three-year federal embezzlement investigation into Russia’s GLONASS national satellite navigation program saw a new development earlier this month as Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court ruled to keep in custody both the former and current CEOs of Synertech, a Moscow-based company contracted for R&D work by Russian Space Systems – one of Russia’s key space exploration and GLONASS program operators and the prime suspect in the investigation.
The two executives had been detained earlier this month in a police operation tied to a broader probe into what is alleged to be Synertech’s 85 million ruble ($2.7 million) misappropriation of government funds.
According to the Moscow police, Russian Space Systems wired the money as payment for bogus R&D that Synertech never completed.
The ex-head of Synertech has been placed under house arrest, and the present CEO is now in jail.
Fund misappropriations, which the police claim were first detected three years ago, now amount to an estimated 6.6 billion rubles (just under $213 million), while investigators keep unraveling new schemes allegedly employed by Russian Space Systems and accomplices.
Last November, for example, the Moscow police apprehended a “fly-by-night” firm that had siphoned off more than 565 million rubles ($60 million) in federal GLONASS money. Russian Space Systems was then found to have orchestrated the theft.
As the criminal investigation unfolds, the GLONASS satellite system, perceived from the outset in the early 1980s as the Russian answer to America’s GPS, continues to grow. Its 29th satellite was successfully launched three weeks ago from the Plesetsk space center in northwest Russia, the Ministry of Defense announced.
