Investigative Committee detains Gazprom unit CEO in bribery case

MOSCOW, Nov 24 (PRIME) -- The Investigative Committee has detained Alexei Rudnev, CEO of gas giant Gazprom’s unit Gazprom Gazoraspredeleniye Krasnodar, and several other employees of the company under a case on a 20 million ruble bribery, spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko told PRIME on Wednesday.

Besides Rudnev, the committee detained his deputy Alexander Savostyanov and deputy CEOs of the company’s subsidiaries in the cities of Sochi, Gelendzhik, Anapa, and Krasnodar – Alexei Petrov, Oleg Butkevich, Stanislav Bariyev, and Konstantin Lyutyi, she said.

All of them are suspected of receiving illegal rewards from businessmen for connection of public and commercial housing to the gas networks and for coordination of commissioning certificates for the gas distribution networks in the region. The combined commercial bribery exceeds 20 million rubles, and the investigators want courts to arrest the detainees, Petrenko said.

(74.8327 rubles – U.S. $1)

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