Former Military General Jailed 9 Years for Bribery

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A Russian military court on Tuesday sentenced a former Defense Ministry general to nine years in prison for taking bribes worth nearly $150,000 in exchange for steering state contracts.

Prosecutors said Alexander Ogloblin, who once served as the ministry’s communications chief, accepted payments from a telecom company between 2019 and 2023 while overseeing defense contracts valued at more than 1.4 billion rubles ($17.3 million).

Ogloblin, 58, pleaded guilty in March and sought leniency

Prosecutors had asked a judge to sentence the former general to over 12 years in prison.

Along with the prison sentence, Ogloblin was fined 12.4 million rubles ($153,000), barred from public office for six years and stripped of his rank and state honors.

It was not the first conviction for Ogloblin, who in 2022 was sentenced to four and a half years for fraud involving nearly $20 million in state funds earmarked for military communications. He secured early release through corrective labor after cooperating with investigators, though the terms of that release have since been repeatedly challenged.

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