MOSCOW (Reuters) - The former deputy head of the Russian army's general staff was sentenced on Thursday to seven years in a penal colony for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes.
Vadim Shamarin, a lieutenant-general, is one of a string of top officials charged in a series of corruption scandals that have engulfed the highest echelons of the Russian military establishment over the past year.
The prosecutions signal a drive by President Vladimir Putin to clamp down on graft, inefficiency and waste in Russia's huge military budget as it wages war in Ukraine for a fourth year.
Russia's Investigative Committee said Shamarin, 53, took bribes worth 36 million roubles ($440,000) between 2019 and 2023 from a factory in the Ural mountains that produces communications equipment. In return, he increased the size of state contracts awarded to the firm.
Interfax news agency said the official had pleaded guilty.
Since 2020 Shamarin had been in charge of overseeing the army's Signal Corps, which is responsible for military communications, including ensuring confidential battlefield command signals.
The court stripped him of his rank and banned him from public service for seven years.
The slew of scandals - the biggest to hit the Russian army in years - includes criminal cases against former deputy defence ministers Timur Ivanov, Pavel Popov and Dmitry Bulgakov. All served under Sergei Shoigu, who was defence minister until being replaced in a reshuffle last year and moved to a new role as secretary of Russia's Security Council.
In the latest case, the former governor of the western Kursk region was arrested on Wednesday and charged with embezzling money earmarked for building defences along the border with Ukraine.
Alexei Smirnov was head of the region when Ukrainian troops stormed across the border in a large-scale incursion last August. Ukraine seized a chunk of Kursk and held onto it for months, but since then a Russian offensive has ejected most of its forces.
($1 = 81.9000 roubles)
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou and Felix Light; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
