The Moscow office of the Skolkovo Foundation – a major science and innovation center championed by Dmitry Medvedev and headed by one of Russia’s richest businessmen, Viktor Vekselberg - has been raided by federal agents.
The press service of the Investigative Committee – Russia’s
agency for especially grave and resonant crimes – reported that the
Thursday searches were connected with the criminal case instigated
against the former head of the foundation’s financial department,
Kirill Lugovtsev.
Apart from searching the offices the investigators (who presented
themselves as agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB)
questioned several executives, including Skolkovo Director
Vekselberg, Interfax reported quoting the Skolkovo press
service.
Vekselberg has an estimated personal fortune of US$18 billion.
The case against Lugovtsev was started in February after the
company’s external audit showed that the executive allegedly
embezzled 24 million rubles (about $800,000) by renting office
space from a company that belonged to his mother. By the time of
the audit, Lugovtsev had long since left the manager’s position in
the foundation.
After mass media reported about the criminal probe, Vekselberg
announced that the company had already returned the allegedly
embezzled funds, but this information got no official confirmation
from the law enforcers.
The Investigative Committee earlier reported that it was checking
the circumstances under which the 3.5 billion rubles (over $110
million) allocated to Skolkovo from the state budget spent too much
time in the accounts of Metkombank – a commercial bank affiliated
with Vekselberg.
The foundation managers said that the bank was chosen simply
because it was offering better deposit conditions.
The Skolkovo Foundation, sometimes dubbed ‘the science city’ by the
mass media, is a non-profit organization founded in 2010 on the
initiative of then-President Dmitry Medvedev.
The main objective of the foundation is to recruit resources
capable of conducting modern applied research and creating a
comfortable environment for hi-tech companies specializing in such
fields as energy-saving, space exploration, biomedicine, nuclear
technology and IT. In other words, to reverse the ‘brain drain’
that afflicted the country after the break-up of the Soviet
Union.
Russian officials have likened the project to the US Silicon Valley
and pinned to it the hopes for the nation’s technological
breakthrough.
In 2012 the budget of the organization amounted to 50 billion
rubles (about $1.7 billion), with 42 billion rubles ($1.4 billion)
allocated from the state budget.