MoD officials accused of embezzling 6.3 million roubles

The Moscow City Military Prosecutor's Office is accusing employees of the Unified Settlement Centre (USC) of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of embezzling 6.3 million roubles, which were transferred as wages to non-existent militaries of the Southern Military District.

"It was revealed that in this March, at the USC premises, Igor Bilevich, Deputy Chief of the Settlement Department of the USC, Oleg Munyaev, Chief of the Committee of the Department No. 2, Ilya Sobolev, Economist of the Committee of the Department No. 3, made from their colleagues' working places a transfer of 6.3 million roubles to 128 bank cards of non-existent soldiers of Southern Military District," states the website of the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia.

It is also reported that 4 million roubles of this amount have been already "cashed by an unidentified person and embezzled."

According to the materials of inspection, the Prosecutor's Office instituted criminal case under Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "fraud on a large scale", that stipulates a penalty of up to ten years of imprisonment, the RIA "Novosti" reports.