Russian space exec 'arrested'

2005-11-15 08:11

Moscow - The head of a Russian rocket and space technology company has been arrested on espionage charges and accused of delivering sensitive technology to China in violation of state export controls, the Federal Security Service said on Monday.

Igor Reshetin, director of TsNIIMASH-Export, is charged with the illegal transfer of state-controlled technology to a Chinese company, according to the press service of the Federal Security Service, or FSB.

Reshetin is also charged with stealing 30 million rubles (about R 6.9 million) through a scheme involving fake companies and falsified documents, and two of his deputies are charged in connection with the alleged theft, it said.

The company - owned by the state-controlled Central Research Institute for Machine Building - known by the acronym TsNIIMASH, declined to comment and referred questions to a lawyer who could not immediately be reached. TsNIIMASH officials also declined to comment.

TSNIIMASH-Export is based outside Moscow in the town of Korolyov - a space industry centre that is home to the mission control facility for Russian space flights.

Its website says it was established in 1991 and has fulfilled some than 120 contracts with space organisation and enterprises.

The FSB identified the Chinese entity to which Reshetin allegedly delivered the technology in violation of state controls as TOCHMA, which it said was an export-import corporation. It did not say what the technology was.

Russia sold China the technology that formed the basis of its manned space programme, which launched a two-man crew last month on its second successful orbital mission.

China has become the biggest foreign customer for Russia's weapons industry.

Last year, a Russian physicist was convicted of spying for China and sentenced to 14 years in prison for providing allegedly sensitive information that he argued was not classified and said had been published in part in scientific magazines.

The physicist, Valentin Danilov, was initially acquitted but was retried and convicted last November in what human rights groups said was a crackdown by Russian authorities on scholars. His sentence was later reduced by one year.

- AP