The Kirovsky District Court of Makhachkala ordered the arrest of former Daghestan Minister of Health Tatyana Belyaeva on charges of large-scale fraud. She has been remanded in custody for two months, until 3 December 2025, press service of Daghestan’s courts and local media reported on Sunday, 5 October.
According to investigators, in September 2020 a group of officials from the Daghestan Ministry of Health signed contracts with commercial organisations worth ₽516 million ($6 million). The contracts were part of the implementation of the project Regional Fragment of the Unified State Information System in the Field of Healthcare of the Republic of Daghestan. Under the terms of the agreement, contractors were obliged to provide free warranty maintenance of the system for one year.
However, investigators allege that between 2021 and 2024, Belyaeva issued orders to sign new contracts with other organisations for technical support of the same work. The new contracts reportedly duplicated the existing warranty obligations and lacked economic justification. According to investigators, these actions caused damage to the regional budget exceeding ₽1 million ($12,000).
Belyaeva is charged under the article on fraud committed by a group of persons or on an especially large scale. The charge carries a potential penalty of up to ten years’ imprisonment or a substantial fine.
Tatyana Belyaeva was detained in the Stavropol region, where she had recently been working as director of the Caucasus Sanatorium in Kislovodsk. After her arrest, she was taken to Makhachkala, where the court granted the investigators’ request to remand her in custody.
Belyaeva was born in 1968 and began her medical career in 1991. She worked as a pathologist and later became the head of the Republican Bureau of Forensic Pathology. In 2016, she was appointed head of the department for the organisation of medical care within the Daghestan Ministry of Health.
In December 2019, Belyaeva became the first deputy minister of health of the republic. In that position, she oversaw programmes for the development of the healthcare system, improvement of medical service quality, and sanitary and epidemiological oversight. She was also responsible for primary, emergency, and high-tech medical care, as well as for developing palliative services.
From December 2020, Belyaeva served as acting minister of health, and in February 2022 she was officially appointed to the post. She held the position until August 2024, when she moved to Kislovodsk to continue working in the medical sector.
In April 2023, Daghestani Head Sergei Melikov publicly criticised the work of the Ministry of Health. He stated that private clinics were being paid from the Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund for tests that could have been carried out free of charge in state medical facilities.
In October 2023, searches were conducted at the Daghestan Ministry of Health as part of a criminal case concerning the embezzlement of 42 million roubles. According to official reports, during the COVID-19 pandemic — from late 2021 to early 2022 — the ministry signed two state contracts for the supply of testing reagents. Law enforcement authorities claim that the contracts were overpriced, causing damage to the state budget of ₽42 million ($500,000), which constitutes an especially large amount under the Russian Criminal Code.
Elizaveta Chukharova
