Burlakov Convinces Deputies of His Innocence

In a closed State Duma hearing Thursday on corruption in the now-defunct Western Group of Forces, the group's disgraced commander General Matvei Burlakov effectively convinced deputies that he had not been personally guilty of any wrongdoing.


However, new accusations have been leveled at the Defense Ministry's Chief Trade Directorate, which supervises all commercial dealings by the military.


The hearing, organized by the parliament's defense and security committees, was attended by representatives of the army and the Finance Ministry. Burlakov, who was recently fired by President Boris Yeltsin as deputy defense minister pending an investigation of corruption charges against him, emerged as a clear winner. "Now I see that Burlakov is innocent," said Security Committee chairman Viktor Ilyukhin. "But he presented interesting documents. The thread probably leads to the Chief Trade Directorate."


Burlakov beamed as he came out of the hearing. "It was a success," he said. "I am satisfied with the outcome."


Deputies leaving the hearing did not supply details of the documents presented by Burlakov, on grounds that some of them are classified.


"There are several commercial organizations using the cover of the Defense Ministry that were involved in illegal activities," said Alexei Arbatov of the reformist Yabloko faction.


If the documents presented to the legislators are authentic, corruption in the military was rooted at a higher level than the Western Group, until this year based in Germany. Generals at the Chief Trade Directory, who allegedly ordered their subordinates in the Western Group to sign unprofitable contracts in Germany in exchange for bribes, were also accused at the hearing of corrupt dealings in Hungary and Poland.


However, according to deputies, no evidence against Defense Minister Pavel Grachev was offered at the hearing, despite numerous media reports linking him to corrupt practices.


The campaign against Grachev began after the murder of investigative journalist Dmitry Kholodov who reported on corruption in the army. Burlakov was the man whom Kholodov's newspaper, Moskovsky Komsomolets, blamed for the murder along with the minister.


Grachev, according to wire service reports, checked into a hospital Friday for tests. "He felt unwell after appearing in parliament last week," Reuters quoted a Defense Ministry spokesman as saying. "Doctors advised that he go into the hospital for checks."


Despite its proclaimed ill effects, the legislators' reception of Grachev had been sympathetic as they greeted with applause his calls for increased financing to improve combat readiness.


Alexander Vladimirov, a presidential adviser on defense matters, predicted that the hearing would not yield any damning evidence against top Defense Ministry officials."The matter of corruption in the Western Group will remain in the framework of existing criminal cases," he said. "But more and more top officials will be invited to face these hearings as a matter of creating checks and balances for the military."


Yeltsin has disregarded calls for Grachev's resignation, including those coming from the Duma's Defense committee chairman Sergei Yushenkov of the pro-Yeltsin Russia's Choice faction.


Meanwhile, the Supreme Court continued hearing one of the existing criminal cases on corruption in the Western Group.


Major General Nikolai Seliverstov, accused of embezzlement and of taking bribes of thousands of Deutsch marks, told the court Thursday that he was simply bad at paperwork."To tell you honestly, I don't care for that sort of thing," Seliverstov said, faced with charges of accepting a bribe for letting a church group use a military plane to fly 18.5 tons of church goods to Kazakhstan.


Asked why he had consented to send his planes to a country not his own, Seliverstov replied that he considered Kazakhstan "home."


"These flights were very profitable for the Western Group," he added. "This was the only criterion for me."