Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree on Wednesday dismissing Lieutenant General Mikhail Korobkin from his post as Ingushetia’s Interior Minister.
Korobkin had led the republic’s Interior Ministry since June 2019. In early September, several regional Telegram channels and local outlets noted that his name had not appeared in official releases from Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry for about a month. Colonel Aleksey Kozyarsky was named as acting head of the directorate in his stead.
In July this year, a number of agencies and publications, including state-run outlets, reported that investigative actions and searches had been carried out at Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry. According to sources, the searches were being carried out as part of an investigation into allegations of embezzlement.
State-run news agency TASS reported that initial checks were launched after the arrests of the head of the ministry’s financial support centre, the head of the finance department — who is under house arrest — and an employee of the accounting office of the Sunzhensky district police department. TASS also reported that a team from the Main Directorate for Internal Security of the Russian Interior Ministry had arrived from Moscow to the region and that, according to a source, the arrival of a second group of inspectors was planned.
After these reports, the press service of Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry published a statement denying information about alleged searches on its premises or at the homes of police officers. In the official release, the ministry called media reports ‘unreliable’.
At the same time, Russian state television channel REN TV, citing its own source, reported that Korobkin is suspected of corruption causing damage of about ₽500 million ($6 million). The Interfax news agency has written that the total estimated damage, according to preliminary data, may exceed ₽1 billion ($12 million). Both publications cite sources in law enforcement agencies. The official statement from Russia’s Interior Ministry announcing the personnel changes does not specify the grounds for Korobkin’s dismissal.
According to the Russian independent media outlet RTVI, non-existent employees had been ‘receiving salaries’ at the ministry for a long time.
As early as May it became known that the ministry’s internal security officers had identified signs of possible involvement by a number of employees of the republic’s directorate and its territorial subdivisions in the embezzlement of funds allocated for the financing of the ministry’s bodies. At that time, the Interior Ministry said that all those found guilty would be dismissed and their immediate supervisors would face disciplinary measures. Specific names and positions of the persons involved were not disclosed at the time.
Alongside the decree relieving Korobkin of his duties, Putin signed other decrees dismissing regional police chiefs, including Major General Arsen Isagulov, head of the Interior Ministry directorate for Sakhalin region in Russia’s far east.
In August, the Investigative Committee of Russia reported that a criminal group had been uncovered on Sakhalin that organised illegal migration into the region. The group allegedly included four residents of Sakhalin region and four officers from the migration department of the regional Interior Ministry.
Elizaveta Chukharova
