MOSCOW. Nov 28 (Interfax) - A criminal investigation has been opened against Sergei Khursevich, former general director of the Oboronservice company, which is controlled by the Russian Defense Ministry, on the counts of collusion in large-scale tax evasion, sources in law enforcement agencies told Interfax on Thursday.
The inquiry was launched in response to inspection results, which were forwarded by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office to military investigators, they said.
The inquiry centers on previous acquisitions of Italian-made armored military hardware for the Russian Defense Ministry, one of the sources said.
Interfax has been informed that the Main Military Prosecutor's Office provided military investigative agencies with copies of documents earlier issued in the case of the Defense Ministry's former top officials.
"These materials also include replies to these documents, confirming that the Defense Ministry's officials, contrary to some of their comments in the media, were aware of multiple violations of the law committed during operations with assets belonging to the Russian Defense Ministry, as well as abuses committed at Oboronservice and organizations under its control," another source told Interfax.
"However, these former senior officials of the Russian Defense Ministry failed to take any measures to deal with these violations concerning the use and sales of these assets," he said.
The source did not rule out that these documents, "along with the [Oboronservice] criminal case files, will play an important role in giving a legal assessment of the officials' actions."
In an interview with Interfax, a spokesman for the Russian Main Military Prosecutor's Office confirmed that the aforementioned documents had been forwarded to the Main Military Investigative Directorate of the Russian Investigative Committee.