Russian news agency TASS is reporting that Roscosmos, the country’s space agency, is involved in alleged “systematic legal violations”, and with 16 criminal cases now under way.

Alexander Kurennoy, from Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, is quoted by TASS saying: “During the period between 2017 and the first six months of 2018, documents on the activities conducted by the previous management of Roscosmos had been reviewed. Systemic violations of the law had been detected, particularly regarding the state’s defence procurement, with research and development work having been conducted improperly. This also concerns the area linked to state-of-the-art engineering, and where work on registering patents on intellectual property is carried out, they had been often disrupted. This includes the deadline of defence missions, where evidence of poor-quality products being supplied had been revealed,” he said.

Prosecutors also revealed violations of procurement legislation, namely when it comes to pricing and import substitution. “The situation in the rocket and space industry in general was deemed unsatisfactory since the corporation hadn’t enacted the required controls for the appropriate expenditure of budget funds by all of the enterprises’ branches,” Kurennoy stressed.

In total, 1,700 legal breaches had been documented reported TASS. “Based on the violations uncovered, the prosecutors had made 302 submissions with more than 200 officials having been brought up for (disciplinary and administrative) liability. Furthermore, the prosecutors had sent 44 materials to investigating agencies in accordance with Article 37 of the Russian Criminal Code with 16 criminal cases already initiated,” added Kurennoy, pointing out that the Prosecutor General’s office is keeping an eye on the current administration’s activities. “It is being conducted round the clock, an analysis of the activities of the corporation’s new management is expected a little bit later,” he noted.

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