Embezzlement At Russian Space Facility

LAUNCH PAD

Blowing away big bucks since 1957.

Kazakhstan (UPI) Mar 22, 2005
Kazakh and Russian watchdog agencies are investigating $65 million that might have been embezzled from payments for the Baykonur cosmodrome, local media said.

The Russian Audit Chamber and the Kazakh Audit Committee said money disappeared in the course of Russia's paying Kazakhstan for leasing Baykonur, according to an article in the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

Russia leases Baykonur - 330 miles to the southwest of the Kazakh capital, Astana - from the government for an annual rent of $115 million. Part of the rent is paid in the form of goods.

In 1999, the Kazakh railroad company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy purchased equipment for $65 million from three companies in Omsk, a Russian city in Siberia.

The price of the equipment was inflated 2.8 times over its normal value, said Omarkhan Oksikbayev, the head of the Kazakh Audit Committee. The Russi an Audit Chamber also confirmed these figures.

The Kazakh financial police have started to question participants in the transactions, the newspaper said.

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