As the Cheka-OGPU learned, officers of a military unit in the Astrakhan region decided…

As the Cheka-OGPU learned, officers of a military unit in the Astrakhan region, having decided to earn extra money on the property entrusted for storage and use for its intended purpose, sold 8 brake parachutes to a friend at a price of $2,000 – $2,100 apiece. In March 2022, servicemen Nikolai Yemtsev and Igor Ostapenko took 4 drogue parachutes from the warehouse on a van and in return received the same number of worn-out parachutes from the buyer to conceal the theft.

The old parachutes were marked with serial numbers similar to the new ones; Yemtsev and Ostapenko planned to write them off. Last June they repeated the trick with four more parachutes. The embezzlement was revealed in mid-November during an inventory check, when inspectors at the warehouse, instead of new parachutes, discovered worn-out ones that were unsuitable for further use. As a result, the Ministry of Defense suffered damage in the amount of 4.056 million rubles.

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A criminal case was initiated against the officers under Part 4 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (embezzlement on an especially large scale). During the investigation, some of the parachutes were returned to the military unit. Yemtsev and Ostapenko transferred the remaining 523 thousand rubles to the account of branch No. 1 of the Financial Support Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in the Astrakhan Region. The court sentenced them to two and three years of probation respectively, but did not deprive them of their military ranks.