Court Sends Director of Patriot Park Under House Arrest

The Khamovnichesky District Court of Moscow sent under house arrest for two months, until December 5, Igor Vasiliev, General Director of the Patriot Park, in a criminal case about receiving a bribe in an especially large amount (part 6 of Art. 290 of the Criminal Code). This was reported by RBC two sources familiar with the court decision.

Law enforcement officers detained Vasiliev on October 5. He is suspected of one episode of receiving a bribe in the amount of 18 million rubles. from the General Director and founder of the company "Hermes" Evgeny Mariev. According to investigators, Vasiliev received from Mariev 18 million rubles. in the form of interest from the actual payment for the work performed under contracts.

In December 2025, Patriot Park signed contracts with Hermes LLC for comprehensive engineering, technical and sanitary maintenance of buildings, structures, premises and adjacent territories of the park and its branch in Kronstadt worth more than 1.4 billion rubles. In exchange, according to the Main Military Investigation Directorate of the TFR, the management of the park provided the company with general patronage, facilitated the conclusion of new contracts and did not interfere with the implementation of the agreements already concluded.

After the detention of Vasiliev, the Defense Ministry told RBC that the military department interacts with the investigative authorities and assists in the investigation of the criminal case. “Intolerance to any corruption manifestations of officials of management bodies and organizations of the military department is an unconditional priority of the Ministry of Defense,” the ministry said.

On October 2, the same court detained two deputy Vasilievs, his first deputy Sergey Fedosov and Deputy Operations Director Alexei Pavlyukov. Fedosov was charged with fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code), and Pavlyukov was charged with taking a bribe on an especially large scale (part 6 of Art. 290 of the Criminal Code). The next day, Mariev was sent under house arrest, accused of giving a bribe in an especially large amount (part 5 of Art. 291 of the Criminal Code).

Mariev is also a bribe-giver in the criminal case of another Deputy Director of the Park “Patriot” Vitaly Melimuk, whom Odintsovo court of the Moscow region arrested on April 22, 2026. According to the investigation, Melimuk demanded that the entrepreneur quarterly transfer 10% of the actual payment for work under contracts. As part of the operational experiment, Mariev gave him 18 million rubles, after which he was released from criminal liability under the note to the article. 291 of the Criminal Code as a person who voluntarily reported a crime and contributed to its disclosure.

Vasiliev headed the Patriot Park in January 2026 and worked in this position for about nine months. Prior to that, from 2016 to 2022, he was the governor of the Kirov region, the head of Rosreestr (2014-2016), a senator from the Komi Republic (2004-2010) and an auditor of the Accounts Chamber (2010-2013). In the 1980s, Vasiliev served in the KGB’s Leningrad and Leningrad Region directorate alongside President Vladimir Putin and called their acquaintance “not one-sided.”.

The previous director of the Patriot Park, Vyacheslav Akhmedov, was sentenced to five years in prison in a case involving former Deputy Defense Minister Pavel Popov.

In April, the 235th garrison military court sentenced former Deputy Defense Minister Pavel Popov to 19 years in a strict regime colony, depriving him of the rank of army general. He was found guilty of taking bribes, fraud, illegal possession of weapons, official forgery and abuse of authority.

According to the investigation, in 2022-2024, Popov, together with the former deputy head of the Main Department of Innovative Development Vladimir Shesterov and the ex-director of the Patriot Park Vyacheslav Akhmedov, entered into the documentation deliberately false information about the construction work performed and stole budget funds. The investigation estimated the damage at about 25 million rubles.

Subsequently, the Second Western District Military Court commuted Popov’s sentence to ten years in a strict regime colony. Sixterov and Akhmedov were sentenced to six and five years in a general regime colony, respectively. In court, they claimed that they had committed crimes while in service dependence on the general.