A source from the Cheka-OGPU reported that the former commander of the 58th Army, who appears in the case…

A source from the Cheka-OGPU reported that the mysterious general who appears in the case of the former commander of the 58th Army, Ivan Popov, who, according to media reports, died before the start of the investigation, is Popov’s friend General Oleg Tsokov. They served together, took part in hostilities, and both became Russian military leaders. Popov and Tsokov were family friends, their wives added joint photos on social networks, one of which was from the church during a joint trip to the Epiphany service.

According to investigators, General Ivan Popov was involved in the theft (charged with “Fraud”, Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) in 2023 of more than 1.7 thousand tons of metal structures purchased by the military-civil administration of the Zaporozhye region for the military. These materials were intended for equipping engineering defensive structures on the line of combat contact with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Their cost is estimated at about 130 million rubles.

According to the source, the blame for the theft should have fallen on the shoulders of Oleg Tsokov, but he posthumously received the title of Hero of Russia. Then the investigation switched to Ivan Popov, who fell into disgrace. It was established that Tsokov transferred money in the amount of 500 thousand rubles to Popov’s card. They are trying to impute this amount as part of the share for the former commander of the 58th Army for participation in the cutting.

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According to Ivan Popov, he borrowed half a million from his friend Oleg Tsokov, and during the search nothing valuable was found on him. Which, according to the general’s defense, unambiguously characterizes him as a moneyless person. But the investigator countered by citing a very revealing detail: while examining the phone seized from Ivan Popov, investigators opened the Winline bookmaker application and discovered that the general had lost a total of about 30 million rubles on bets.

As the Cheka-OGPU found out, the widow of Oleg Tsokov is the founder of a micro-enterprise called Southern Metallo Center. This company was involved in the supply of metal structures for the needs of the Moscow Region. The company was registered in 2019 in Belorechensk and, according to OKVED, is engaged in trade in building materials, metal structures and others.

You can’t find any contacts of suppliers in the public domain: a company with up to 3 people has neither a website nor a phone number, is based in an industrial zone in some kind of hangar, and director Sergei Moiseev is mentioned only as the former head of another company, Shopping Center House, where the founder was a certain Svetlana Popova. This legal entity was liquidated, and information about Sergei Moiseev was recognized as unreliable, which does not prevent him from being the director of the YuMC.