The Basmanny District Court of Moscow on Wednesday, April 24, ordered Russian Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov to be remanded in custody for two months until June 23, satisfying the petition of the investigators. Ivanov has been charged with receiving an especially large bribe (Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, punishable by up to 15 years in prison). "The investigation believes that Ivanov entered into a criminal conspiracy with third parties, previously forming an organized group to commit the crime of receiving a particularly substantial bribe in the form of services of a property nature during contracting and subcontracting work for the needs of the Ministry of Defense," said the joint press service of the courts.

Ivanov's alleged accomplice, Sergey Borodin, was also arrested and placed in pre-trial detention for the same two-month period.

Ivanov has not admitted his guilt, reports the news agency TASS citing sources in law enforcement.

According to the Telegram channel Mash, the court did not specify the amount of damage, stating that investigators are still assessing it. TASS reports that Ivanov was apprehended on the evening of April 23 and that the deputy minister had long been under surveillance. The newspaper "Izvestia" reported that several other individuals were detained along with Ivanov.

Meanwhile, the news outlet Important Stories, citing two sources close to the FSB, reported that the real reason behind Timur Ivanov's arrest may be suspicion of state treason. "The bribe is just for show. They don't want to talk publicly about state treason yet—it's a big scandal considering it involves a deputy minister of defense," one source said. Another asserted that Russian President Vladimir Putin "gave the order after being persuaded that the matter was indeed one of state treason," and that Ivanov "would not have been detained just for corruption."

According to "Important Stories" sources, the FSB’s Department of Military Counter-Intelligence is managing the operational support of the case. "They are deciding what to do with him: whether to convict him on the bribery charge and 'finish him off' in prison, or to reclassify the charge to one of state treason," one source stated.

Associates of Alexei Navalny published a comprehensive investigation into Timur Ivanov and his wife Svetlana Zakharova (Maniovich) in December 2022. Their data indicate that between 2010-2018, the couple rented villas on the French Riviera every summer, spending no less than 850 thousand euros on accommodations in Saint-Tropez. The investigation claimed that Ivanov received kickbacks from construction companies contracting for the Ministry of Defense and divorced his wife in June 2022 so she could avoid EU sanctions, as she continued to travel to the bloc even after Russia began its full-scale war against Ukraine.

  Russia, Timur Ivanov

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