Former Deputy Minister of Education Marina Rakova faces new charges of fraud

Former Deputy Minister of Education and former Vice President of Sberbank Marina Rakova have been charged with a new fraud charge. About it informs TASS with reference to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The department said that the damage in the new episode of the criminal case against Rakova amounted to 9 million rubles.

November 19, the main investigation department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow presented Rakova, as well as the former deputy director of the Foundation for New Forms of Education Development Yevgeny Zak, charges of particularly large-scale fraud (part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code). The investigation suggests that in 2018, Rakova and Zak entered into an agreement with the director of the Institute of Social Sciences of the RANEPA Sergei Zuev and fictitiously employed 12 employees of the Ministry of Education in the institute he headed.

According to the investigation, they did not perform any work at the institute, but in 2018-2020 they received a salary there. The Ministry of Internal Affairs claims that because of this, the RANEPA suffered damage in the amount of more than 20 million rubles.

On October 12, the rector of Shaninka, Sergei Zuev, was detained in the case of Rakova. He is suspected of stealing 21 million rubles from the Fund for New Forms of Education Development. The rector was initially placed under house arrest, but on November 9, the Moscow City Court placed Zuev in a pre-trial detention center, despite the fact that over the past month he suffered several hypertensive crises. The measure of restraint was changed at the request of the prosecutor’s office.

Rakova, according to the investigation, as deputy head of the Ministry of Education received state funding for a project for the Fund for New Forms of Education Development, which she herself headed. In addition, investigators believe that she stole funds when concluding government contracts for the implementation of the Teacher of the Future project in 2019. Shaninka was the contractor for the Teacher of the Future.

According to the findings of the investigative expertise, there are signs of falsification in the reports on ongoing scientific research.

Zuev’s defense said that the case involved two contracts with an initial value of 50 million rubles. However, during the year they were not executed in full and were terminated by agreement of the parties. By that time, the performers had already received 21 million rubles.

As part of the criminal investigation, in addition to Rakova and Zuev, former employees of the Foundation for New Forms of Education Development Yevgeny Zak and Maxim Inkin, Rakova’s common-law husband Artur Stetsenko, and Shaninka executive director Kristina Kryuchkova were arrested.