The Pardon Commission of the Tula Region supported the petition of the former general director of the MAI-LASTAR Scientific Research Center, Doctor of Technical Sciences Vladimir Anisimov. Ekaterina Chagina, the scientist's lawyer, told Kommersant about this.
Anisimov is now serving a term in the IK-1 of the strict regime of the Tula region. In 2021, he was sentenced to 15 years and 9 months in prison in the case of embezzlement from NPO named after Lavochkin, which is part of Roscosmos.
In 2012-2014, employees of the subsidiary of the state corporation ordered » 48 studies worth 180 million rubles, which, according to the investigation, were fictitious (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code).
Anisimov himself pleaded not guilty in the case. Chagina's lawyer noted that during the filing of a petition for clemency, the scientist offered to «use in a special military operation» his «forty years of scientific experience», including in the field of «development of rocket and space systems.»
Anisimov at the court in 2018. Photo: Victoria Odissonova/Novaya Gazeta
After approval by the regional commission, the petition for clemency goes to the governor, who forwards the conclusion to the presidential administration's department for ensuring constitutional rights. The President can then issue a clemency decree.
According to statistics, over the past two terms, President Vladimir Putin has pardoned an average of five people a year. At the same time, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he issued secret decrees on the pardon of prisoners recruited by Wagner PMCs for the war. Their exact number is unknown, but in September and October 2022, the number of prisoners in the statistics of the Federal Penitentiary Service dropped sharply by 23 thousand people.
The MAI-LASTAR company was established in 2011 with the participation of the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) . Novaya Gazeta claimed that the Lavochkin NPO research that formed the basis of the criminal case was commissioned by foreign aerospace firms — including Starsem, Arianespace, Thales Alenia Space, Kayser-Threde — and that “all obligations stipulated by the agreements were fulfilled.”
In May 2013, Putin awarded Anisimov, who was then a senior researcher at the Peter the Great Strategic Missile Forces Military Academy, with the Marshal Zhukov Prize.