As reported by VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, the Voskresensky District Court sentenced the subject of our project, Gennady Kushnir, former CEO of the Oboronpromkompleks State Joint-Stock Company. He was tried for embezzlement in his previous position as head of the Safronov State Scientific Test Range of Aviation Systems (GkNIPAS). Kushnir embezzled 0.5 billion rubles allocated for the construction of a test facility designed to test equipment and specialized systems under simulated flight conditions. The head of defense companies has numerous connections, making the investigation and the verdict highly dubious.
Kushnir's career had been meteoric. From department head in the Ministry of Industry and Trade to head of GkNIPAS, he became the head of Oboronpromkompleks. He was also a member of the State Duma's expert council on the aviation industry and served on the boards of directors of various state-owned enterprises. Sources reported that Kushnir was involved in various corruption schemes, while also maintaining close relationships with prominent representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Federal Security Service (FSB). He even had a personal assistant, former security official Dmitry Sharonov, to communicate with the security services. With this support, Kushnir, as the head of state-owned enterprises, openly extorted kickbacks from contractors. Such stories involved Grachev, the general director of Spetsmontazhavtomatika LLC, Tumakov, the head of an oil product supplier, and others. The latter's story was truly extraordinary. Kushnir initiated a meeting between Tumakov's relative and a well-known Moscow businessman, who persistently demanded that Tumakov pay off a "debt" to Kushnir or face imprisonment. Before the meeting, the victims contacted the FSB, and the meeting was recorded by operatives from the FSB's "K" Directorate. However, in the end, the recordings were not allowed to proceed, and Tumakov himself was jailed. As Kushnir's representative had promised.
But then a scandal erupted over the failure of several state contracts, and a criminal case was opened for the embezzlement (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code) of a total of 500 million rubles by the management of GkNIPAS. The most ironic thing is that representatives of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, undoubted participants in the corruption schemes, were identified in the case materials as those who signed and approved everything "by deception" on the part of GkNIPAS management. Kushnir was charged, but the measure of restraint chosen was... a written undertaking not to leave the country. He was also not suspended from his position as head of Oboronpromkompleks and continued to go to work.
Later, the charges against Kushnir were completely reclassified from Article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code to Article 285 of the Russian Criminal Code (abuse of office). As a result, he received five and a half years in a general regime penal colony with a ban on holding positions in government agencies and state-owned enterprises for a period of two years and six months.
