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Russian Audit Chamber Head Says He Initiated Major Sting Operation

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  • Russian Audit Chamber Head Says He Initiated Major Sting Operation

    RUSSIAN AUDIT CHAMBER HEAD SAYS HE INITIATED MAJOR STING OPERATION

    NTV Mir, Moscow
    5 Jun 06

    [Presenter] Today it became known that Federation Council Speaker
    Sergey Mironov has asked the People's Hural [parliament] of Kalmykia
    to recall its senator Levon Chakhmakhchyan. [Kalmyk] President Kirsan
    Ilyumzhinov has agreed to this request.

    A couple of days ago, during a FSB special operation, marked notes
    worth 300,000 dollars were found in the Kalmyk senator's briefcase.

    According to the investigators, this is only a part of the bribe,
    which totalled half a million dollars. It is believed that in return
    for the bribe Chakhmakhchyan arranged for documents to be removed
    from the material being used in inspections by the Audit Chamber
    and it is possible that this is not the only case of corruption in
    this department.

    [Sergey Stepashin, Audit Chamber chairman] A few days ago, on Friday [2
    June] an internal operation conducted at my initiative in cooperation
    with the Federal Security Service [FSB] and the prosecutor's office
    ended. Unfortunately, amongst our ranks in the Audit Chamber we found
    our own miscreants and citizens involved in dirty dealing were caught
    red-handed. A criminal investigation has been opened.

    [At 1244 gmt ITAR-TASS added further details given about the
    operation by Stepashin, which was the same operation that caught
    Chakhmakhchyan. According to Stepashin, he asked FSB head Nikolay
    Patrushev for help after the head of Transaero air company Aleksandr
    Pleshakov complained that Audit Chamber employees had offered to
    conceal the results of an unfavourable inspection in return for a
    bribe of 1.5-3m dollars. Stepashin said that several employees had been
    caught by the operation, including an auditor's aide called Oganesyan,
    who is Chakhmakhchyan's son-in-law.

    A second ITAR-TASS report at 0948 gmt cited the Russian prosecutor's
    office as saying that Oganesyan and another man involved in the
    incident, chief accountant of the Russian-Armenian Business Cooperation
    Association Igor Arushanov, had been arrested, but Chakhmakhchyan
    could not be detained as he is a senator and therefore has immunity.]
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