MOSCOW. Feb 18 (Interfax) - Lt. Gen. Nikolai Pereslegin, a first deputy commander of the Southern Federal District, has been indicted for unlawfully using soldiers as workforce and for fraudulent housing schemes, the Investigative Committee's main military investigations directorate said in a statement on Friday.
"The Investigative Committee's military investigations directorate for the Strategic Rocket Forces has presented an indictment against Pereslegin. He has been charged with abuse of office and the use of a knowingly forged document," the directorate said.
The investigators found that, from 2002 to 2008, "a total of six servicemen, instead of performing their military duties, served a bathhouse, cleaned the territory and guarded a house in the Tver region belonging to the general and also repaired and assembled furniture in his apartment in Moscow."
In addition, in order to be unlawfully provided with an apartment in the fall of 2011, "Pereslegin submitted a document to the Defense Ministry housing provision department, which did not include information indicating that he possessed a house."
"Based on this fictitious document, he was unlawfully recognized as entitled to housing from the Defense Ministry. It is only law enforcement agencies' intervention that prevented the general from unlawfully acquiring housing," it said.
In the course of the preliminary investigation, "people figuring in the criminal proceedings attempted to obstruct the collection of evidence in any way they could," the directorate said.