Russia says two more defence officials confess to taking bribes

Russia says two more defence officials confess to taking bribes

Two more senior defence officials have admitted taking bribes, investigators said on Monday, in the latest of a wave of corruption cases that has rocked the Russian military.

The Investigative Committee, a law enforcement agency that handles serious crimes, said the two men had confessed to accepting bribes worth more than 11 million roubles ($120,000) over three years.

It said Ivan Populovsky and Grigory Zorin had accepted the money from two Russian companies contracted to supply the Defence Ministry with electrical products and cable.

Since April, more than a dozen people including senior military officers and ministry officials have been arrested in the biggest wave of scandals to hit the defence establishment in years.

Among the various strands, investigators are probing alleged corruption relating to property services, the supply of military uniforms and the construction of a big military theme park near Moscow.

In May, soon after the first arrests, President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly removed the long-serving Sergei Shoigu as defence minister and replaced him with economist Andrei Belousov in what was widely seen as a move to ensure tighter management of Russia's vast defence budget and eliminate waste and graft.

All of those under investigation served under Shoigu, who led the defence ministry from 2012 until this May and is now secretary of Putin's Security Council.