«Saved for herself»: vice president of Sberbank Marina Rakova is suspected of stealing 50 million rubles

Kremlin today

Former Deputy Minister of Education and now Vice President of Sberbank Marina Rakova is suspected of embezzling $50 million roubles allocated by the state in 2019 for the national project «Education».

In this regard, on September 29, investigative actions began, during which a search was conducted in Rakova’s country house, as well as in her workplace. The operatives carried out checks in the houses of the suspect’s relatives and in the offices of top managers of Sberbank. Representatives of Sber stated that the case against their employee was not related to the organization itself.

Yandex
Yandex

On the day of the search, Marina Rakova was brought in for questioning, after which the investigator ruled to bring her in as a suspect in the criminal case. The rest of the case was to be decided on Thursday. It was decided to confine Rakova to a travel ban or to apply for arrest in the Tver district court.

However, according to RIA Novosti, on Wednesday evening Rakova “failed to show up for questioning and may abscond”. As is specified, the suspect did not get in touch with investigators and relatives, and also did not come to work and left her place of residence.

50 million rubles, for which Rakova is accused of embezzlement, were allocated by the state to the project «Teacher of the future». The money was to be used to improve the qualifications of teachers and their career development. It was planned to open 225 centres of «continuous professional development» of teachers.

However, according to the investigation, part of the project budget was stolen and documents attesting to the execution of state contracts were falsified.At the moment, information about Rakova’s involvement in the embezzlement totaling 150 million rubles under other contracts is under verification.

As Deputy Minister of Education, Marina Rakova served from October 2018 to March 2020, after which she resigned from her post at her own request. Rakova’s appointment as vice president of Sberbank was announced by the head of the bank, Herman Gref, at his press conference. In her position, the new top manager was responsible for the work of the Digital Education Platforms division and the SberEducation LLC enterprise.

Under the article on fraud on an especially large scale, Rakova faces up to ten years in prison. In addition to imprisonment, a fine of one million rubles or the amount of income for three months may be provided.