Irakli Khazalia, former CEO of "Drone Solutions", and Vyacheslav Barbasov, current head and founder of the company, have been arrested on charges of embezzlement through fraud, according to the industry Telegram channel "BesPilot". Details of the detention have not yet been disclosed.
The company is one of the prominent players in the market — one of its founders, with a 23.6% stake, is the NTI Fund, controlled by the Ministry of Industry and Trade. In recent years, "Drone Solutions" has attracted significant funding from "Skolkovo", the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Rosatom, and the "Voskhod" fund (a structure of Vladimir Potanin's "Interros").
These detentions continue a series of criminal cases in the unmanned aviation industry. Earlier, Alla Polovchenya, deputy head of the unmanned systems department of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, was arrested, and top managers and owners of the "EFKO" group, associated with the company "Transport Budushchego", were also detained. According to the investigation, these cases involve multi-million dollar embezzlements during the implementation of state-funded projects. Only a court can provide a final assessment of the actions of the defendants.
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