Russian investigators searched Thursday the offices a state-funded research and development project the Kremlin hoped would become Russia's version of Silicon Valley, in the latest high-profile corruption case.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (L) visits an exhibition of projects by the Skolkovo Foundation at the Digital October IT center in downtown Moscow, on April 25, 2011. Russian investigators searched Thursday the offices a state-funded research and development project the Kremlin hoped would become Russia's version of Silicon Valley, in the latest high-profile corruption case.
The Investigative Committee, Russia's equivalent of the United States' FBI, said it had conducted the searches at the offices of the Skolkovo Fund after serving a search warrant on the fund's billionaire head Viktor Vekselberg.
Investigators confiscated a "significant amount" of fiscal, accounting and other papers from the firm's sleek offices in central Moscow, it added in a statement.
The fund was set up during the 2008-2012 presidency of Dmitry Medvedev as part of his much-touted modernisation drive to wean Russia off oil and gas.
A spokesman for the fund, Roman Shcherbakov, said representatives of the FSB security service and the Investigative Committee arrived at the fund's offices at 9:40 am (0540 GMT).
They asked the employees to gather in a large room and hand in their cell phones while they conducted the searches, he told AFP.
After about an hour most employees were allowed to go home, Shcherbakov added, saying that investigators also spoke to the fund's managers.
The powerful Investigative Committee reports directly to President Vladimir Putin and is overseeing a series of probes into anti-Kremlin opposition activists.
The searches at the fund come after investigators in February opened a criminal case over alleged embezzlement of nearly 24 million rubles ($760,000) by several fund officials.
According to the investigation, the Skolkovo Fund established a subsidiary, Skolkovo Customs Finance Company, which received state money but carried out no significant business operations in the two years since it was set up in 2011.
Its staff of around 10 people received monthly salaries of between 300,000 rubles ($9,500) and 600,000 rubles ($19,000), the investigators said in a statement in February.
The Investigative Committee also said, citing information from the FSB state security service, that the Skolkovo Fund misappropriated 3.5 billion rubles ($110 million) which was deposited into accounts in a bank with links to Vekselberg.
Deputy Prime Minister Vladislav Surkov, who sits on the fund's supervisory board, said the searches should not be politicised.
"I trust the management of the Skolkovo Fund and am sure that they are and will be fully cooperating with the authorities," the Kremlin's former main ideologist told Russian reporters.
During his four years as president, Medvedev pushed his plan to build a high-tech hub outside Moscow where top foreign and Russian scientists could focus their energies on nuclear, space, medicine and other sciences.
In 2010, Medvedev led then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on a tour of the future hub where his guest praised him as a "great visionary" for his efforts to nurture innovation.
But the project was put on the back burner after Putin returned to the Kremlin for a third presidential term last May and made Medvedev his prime minister.
Late last year, Putin launched an anti-corruption drive which many experts say is designed to boost the Russian strongman's sagging approval ratings after mass opposition protests against his 13-year rule.
Yuly Nisnevich, deputy head of Transparency International in Russia, said the latest corruption case highlighted the deep-seated problems of weak governance and the authorities' inability to tackle graft in earnest.
"We've been waiting for this," he told AFP. "Any large project ends in a corruption scandal. That's how the system works: they create a project with major financing, and it later turns out its main purpose was the divvying up of state money."
Medvedev had the best intentions in mind when he pushed for the Skolkovo hub but he did not realise it would not work in the absence of public oversight, Nisnevich added.
"It's a shame," he said. "It had a beautiful beginning."