Vadim Shamarin. Photo: Russian Defence Ministry
A Moscow military tribunal sentenced a former high-ranking defence official on Thursday to seven years in a high-security penal colony on bribery charges, the Russian Investigative Committee press service has announced.
Vadim Shamarin, the former deputy chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and head of its Main Directorate of Communications, was placed in pretrial detention last May.
A spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee said shortly after his arrest that Shamarin had received bribes over the past eight years worth 36 million rubles (€365,000) from a telephone factory in the city of Perm in the Russian Urals to ensure that state orders would increase, among other unspecified favours.
The court stripped Shamarin of his rank of lieutenant general and banned from holding public office for a further seven years, confiscating assets worth about 36 million rubles (€385,000).
Shamarin’s arrest came amid a wave of purges in the Defence Ministry after the sudden replacement of longtime Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu with Andrey Belousov last May.
