The Kremlin’s declared campaign to eliminate corruption and corruption in it russian army Sunday claimed a new victim with the arrest of Major General Mirza Mirzaev on suspicion of extorting military contractors through epic bribes.

Mirzaev, 52, was previously vice commander in Russia’s Southern Military District, for the national law enforcement agency Rosgvardia.

While serving as the Interior Ministry’s top official for logistics and supply in a giant territory covering the southwestern regions of Russia bordering Ukraine and the South Caucasus republics, Mirzaev allegedly demanded a bribe of 140 million rubles (1 .42 million) to a civil contractor that supplied prefabricated buildings to the government.

Apparently working through an intermediary, Mirza threatened the contractor with canceling a lucrative 480 million ruble ($4.88) construction contract if the company did not deliver the bribe personally, in cash, according to charges filed by prosecutors in a Moscow court. .

A judge ordered Mirzaev held without bail until charges were reviewed on Jan. 2. Independent and state-controlled Russian media widely reported on the arrest and details of the alleged bribery scheme.

Russia’s main agency for prosecuting serious crimes, the National Investigative Committee, on October 28 opened a criminal case against Maj. Gen. Aleksander Ogloblin, former head of the Russian military’s Signal Troops Command.

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According to a report by the independent Astra news agency, Ogloblin will face charges of accepting bribes worth more than 10 million rubles ($101,000) while serving as the Russian military’s top communications officer. He allegedly received bribes and incentive payments from, among others, managers at the Telta corporation, a major telephone manufacturer in Russia’s Perm region of western Siberia.

Oglobin had been sentenced to 4.5 years in prison in February 2022 after being found guilty of accepting a bribe of 1.6 billion rubles ($16.27 million) related to the purchase of army telecommunications equipment, but was released after testifying against a colleague who also participated in facilitating Tetla sales. to the Russian army.

A British Defense Intelligence Service statement on October 30 confirmed Oglobin’s second arrest and the new charges.

The arrest of the highest-profile Russian general officer linked to corruption charges so far in 2024 took place in May, when a Moscow military court charged Major General Ivan Popov with fraud that led to the loss of more than $100 million. of rubles ($1.01 million) in state assets. property while commanding the 58th Combined Arms Army in combat in southern Ukraine in 2023.

Prosecutors have accused Popov, a paratrooper popular with troops, of conspiring to sell at least 2,000 tons of construction materials, intended to be used for fortifications, on the black market for personal profit. Popov has emphatically denied the allegations. In a pretrial statement made at the second military court of the Western Court in Petersburg on October 18, he said prosecutors had no viable evidence to support the charges and claimed that he was being persecuted due to personal vendettas against him by others. superior officers.

Popov, one of the few Russian field commanders willing to publicly criticize top military commanders, has accused the Army General Staff and its chief, Valeriy Gerasimov, of carrying out the war against Ukraine unprofessionally and ignoring the comments from the troops. Popov claimed that “all officers under my command” would testify or make written statements to support his innocence.

On May 14, General Yuriy Kuznetsov, head of the personnel and assignments division of the Russian Defense Ministry, was arrested on suspicion of accepting “an exceptionally large bribe” while serving as head of security at the Army General Staff. Russian, an independent Abzatz news agency reported. he said. Investigators who searched Kuznetsov’s country house in an elite district on the outskirts of Moscow found more than 100 million rubles ($1.01 million) in foreign coins, gold, high-value watches and jewelry. art that prosecutors said were too valuable for him to have acquired with his army. salary, the report said.

May saw the arrest of two more generals along with Kuznetsov and Popov: Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov and Major General Vadim Shamarin (the second in which officer Kusnetsov presented state evidence to secure their release).

The British Defense Intelligence report said: “The objective of the Russian authorities is almost certainly not the total elimination of corruption: this behavior is fundamental to the functioning of the regime. “Instead, Russian authorities are likely to seek to limit corruption to more manageable levels.”