Russia's Investigative Committee Launches Corruption Probe Of Official After RFE/RL Report

MOSCOW — Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a probe into the head of the Klin district in the Moscow region, Alyona Sokolskaya, following an investigative report by RFE/RL over possible corruption.

A senior aide to the Investigative Committee’s Moscow regional directorate chief, Olga Vrady, told RFE/RL on December 9 that the probe of Sokolskaya was launched after the report was issued in mid-August about her relatives, friends, and acquaintances allegedly being fictitiously hired at local kindergartens.

According to Vrady, no one had been charged as of December 9 as the investigation continued into the “large-scale embezzlement from the state budget.”

In 2018, after another investigative report by RFE/RL about undeclared property in Spain belonging to Sokolskaya’s family, her husband, Aleksandr Kozlov, resigned from the post of chief prosecutor of the Tula region south of Moscow.

Kozlov was not investigated at the time and his departure from the post was officially described as retirement.