The Basmanny District Court of Moscow arrested three leaders Piket group of companiesin the case of the supply of 20 thousand low-quality body armor to the front, TASS reports.
The founder of the company, Andrei Esipov, was sent to a pre-trial detention center the day before, writes Kommersant. He is accused of fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code).
According to investigators, due to the production and supply of low-quality protection to war participants in Ukraine, the Ministry of Defense suffered damage of 2 billion rubles. In court, Esipov did not admit guilt and said that the case against him was “fabricated.” Today, the head of the security service of the Piket Group of Companies, Mikhail Kalchenko, and the financial director, Victoria Antonova, were placed under arrest in connection with the same case.
Esipov said in court that all the bulletproof vests were sent to one of the military units, where they carried out an examination, “for which representatives of the "Piquet" could not influence, and she confirmed the quality of the products,” Kommersant reports his words. “The generals with whom the contracts were concluded know me, but they didn’t let me call them,” added the head of the company. He added that he was summoned to the Investigative Committee “from the Northern Military District zone.”
Esipov said that “profit is not important” to him and that he “supplied the military department with free products worth 300 million rubles.” “We produce not only protective equipment, but also drones, including kamikaze drones, which are actively used during combat operations,” explained the head of the Piket Group of Companies.
According to the investigation, fraud in the execution of Three witnesses helped identify the contract. Esipov himself believes that the case was based on information received from former Picket employees who were “convicted of large-scale thefts and fired.”