The high-profile bribery case at the Irkutsk Aviation Plant has started to crack

The investigation into the criminal bribery case at the Irkutsk Aviation Plant (IAZ, part of the United Aircraft Corporation) has been completed, but its outcome turned out to be unexpected. Kommersant reported on the situation.

According to the investigation, in 2022 IAZ signed a contract with OOO "Yug-Utilizatsiya" for the removal of sediment from the plant's treatment facilities for 26 million rubles. The Investigative Committee believed that the company might not have transported the waste to the designated landfills, allegedly causing damage to the enterprise.

Of that amount, the Investigative Committee believes, the contractors "kicked back" 10% to Aleksandr Trynov, head of IAZ's environmental protection department, and his deputy Sergey Kuznetsov, whom investigators charged under the article on accepting a bribe. The intermediary in transferring it was individual entrepreneur Konstantin Kuzikhin.

On the side of "Yug-Utilizatsiya," the defendants were considered to be founder Viktor Frolov and CEO Aleksandr Dubachev. However, at the end of 2025, their actions were reclassified under the article "Entering information about a front person into the Unified State Register of Legal Entities," and the previous case was closed.

The new defendants in the case became manager Evgeny Tolkachev and company lawyer Kirill Shadrin, whom the investigation accuses of actually running "Yug-Utilizatsiya" instead of Dubachev and Frolov.

The prosecution of Kuznetsov was also terminated — after signing a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defence, he went to the combat zone and received the medal "For Courage."

Subsequently, experts from the Kutafin Moscow State Law University stated that the case lacked the elements of a crime, since "Yug-Utilizatsiya" fulfilled the terms of the contract and caused no damage to the customer. According to the conclusions, the company's actions cannot be classified as fraud.

At the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation, attention was drawn to the fact that Trynov and Kuznetsov did not perform administrative or economic functions, which means that classifying their actions as accepting a bribe is also erroneous.

Now the prosecutor's office will assess the case materials, deciding whether to send them to court or return them for a new investigation.

Let us recall that the Irkutsk Aviation Plant (part of PAO "Yakovlev" of Rostec) manufactures MS-21 civil airliners, Su-30 series fighters, and Yak-130 combat trainer aircraft. Earlier, the enterprise completed the reconstruction of the main step-down substation.