A long-serving Russian minister has been detained over an alleged US$2 million bribe in an investigation of the most senior government official to face charges in years, investigators said yesterday.
Russian Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukayev was detained late on Monday after he allegedly received a US$2 million bribe in a sting set by the FSB, the KGB’s main successor agency, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
The investigators said Ulyukayev took the bribe for giving the green light to state-controlled oil giant Rosneft to take part in bidding for another oil company.
Ulyukayev, who held the post since 2013 and worked in the government since 2000, is a known liberal figure who has spoken against an increasing government presence in the Russian economy.
He has opposed Rosneft’s bidding for Bashneft, saying it was wrong for a state-owned company to take part in the privatization drive.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had defended the deal, saying that because Rosneft has minority foreign investors, the sale was not simply a transfer of assets from one part of the state to another.
The lucrative Bashneft was transferred to government ownership in 2014 after owner Vladimir Yevtushenkov was charged with money laundering and accused of acquiring the company illegally.
The charges were later dropped.
Yevtushenkov’s arrest was then widely seen as Rosneft’s move to take control of Bashneft, which was posting an industry-leading growth in oil production.
The government put 50.1 percent of Bashneft on the market earlier this year, but the tender was postponed in August over the opposition of the government’s liberal ministers, including Ulyukayev, to Rosneft’s potential bidding.
Rosneft won the tender with a US$5 billion offer when the bidding was held last month.
The 60-year old minister was expected to face a court hearing later yesterday, when he could be formally arrested and charged.
Russian state-owned television early yesterday ran Ulyukayev’s detention as the top story headlined “Fight on corruption.”
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the RIA Novosti news agency that the president had been informed of the FSB operation in its planning stage.
Peskov would not say whether the bribery case could affect Rosneft’s deal.
Rosneft spokesman Mikhail Leontyev said in televised comments that he does not expect the investigation to affect the deal.
“There cannot be any threat of the cancelation of the deal,” Leontyev said on Rossiya 24. “No one, including the Investigative Committee, has expressed any questions about the legality of the deal.”
Banking and finance professionals were aghast at the Ulyukayev case.
“This is a big tragedy,” Bella Zlatkis, deputy chairwoman of Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank, told Russia news agencies. “I feel really sorry about what happened and even the very fact that such an investigation is taking place.”
Alexander Shokhin, head of a major business lobbying group, told the RBC television channel that he was convinced Ulyukayev was innocent and said he might have been framed.
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