In Samara, the trial of Eduard Bagdasaryan, director of the Moscow region company "Aerokon", has begun. He is accused of fraud in the creation of the regional aircraft "Ladoga". The entrepreneur faces up to 10 years in prison.

"Aerokon" received two contracts from "Aviakor" for approximately 43 million rubles for the manufacture of the cockpit canopy frame and tooling for the TVRS-44. Instead of a completely new design, the company proposed using a frame from a decommissioned An-140, which was located on the territory of the Samara enterprise.

According to Bagdasaryan, this approach was supposed to speed up the work. The aircraft are related, so the contractor developed technical specifications and began adapting the design for "Ladoga". However, the contract required the manufacture of a new frame, and the An-140 belonged to the Ministry of Defense.

As a result, a case was opened against the director of "Aerokon" on two counts of large-scale fraud and causing property damage.

At the same time, in an arbitration dispute with "Aviakor", the court established that the frame of the "Ladoga" canopy was delivered on October 31, 2024. "Aviakor" itself demanded to recover 1.773 million rubles in penalties from the contractor, but the court recovered only 52.4 thousand rubles.

Oleg Panteleev, Executive Director of the "Aviaport" agency, explained that in fact, "Ladoga" lost in competition with Il-114-300. The key factor was the project's economics.

Sergey Merenkov, Chief Designer of transport vehicles at UZGA, stated that it was decided to transfer "Ladoga" to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense for the development of a ramp cargo version or with a side door. It is likely that the Ural Plant will undertake this work.