Russia’s new Vostochny space centre has lost at least 11bn roubles (£133m; $172m) through theft and top officials have been jailed.
So what went wrong with President Vladimir Putin’s pet project?
Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee (SK) says it is handling 12 more criminal cases linked to theft in this mega-project, which Mr Putin sees as a strategic priority for Russia, because of its huge commercial potential.
The longest jail term handed down so far was 11-and-a-half years for Yuri Khrizman, former head of state construction firm Dalspetsstroy.
Prof Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), told the BBC the Vostochny scandal highlighted the scale of corruption in Mr Putin’s huge state bureaucracy.
“How can you deal with it without declaring war on your own elite? He’s not prepared to do that. This dependency on mega-projects almost invariably creates massive opportunities for embezzlement,” Mr Galeotti said.
Why is Vostochny so important for Russia?
Vostochny was Russia’s first purpose-built civilian site for commercial space launches. The first launch took place in April 2016 and there have been four more since.
The vast new site is in Russia’s far east, well away from big cities, which reduces the risk of rocket debris hitting any large urban centre. The site used to be a Soviet missile base called Svobodny.
Space missions are a matter of national pride for Russia: it was the Soviet Union, after all, which sent the first human into space – Yuri Gagarin – in 1961.
Visiting Vostochny in September, Mr Putin told space officials: “This is the country’s most important construction project of national significance.”
Vostochny’s total cost is currently put at 300bn roubles (£3.6bn; $4.7bn), Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reports. But the project has been dogged by cost overruns and delays.
Developing Vostochny is also a highly political move, as Russia has until now relied on the Soviet-era Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for international space launches. Kazakhstan is a close neighbour, but having the main launch facility on Russian territory is safer for Moscow in the
long term.
The space centre is still being built: a second launchpad under construction will host the Angara, a new heavy-payload rocket, with the inaugural launch set for 2021.
In early 2015 a group of building workers at the site went on hunger strike, saying they were owed wages after a subcontractor’s bankruptcy.
When the planned first rocket launch was delayed in 2015 – it took place the following year – Mr Putin ordered the SK to examine how Vostochny was being managed. Far-reaching corruption was discovered.
On Sunday the SK reported that 58 officials involved in the project had been sentenced for fraud and abuse of office.
Khrizman’s theft alone cost the state 5.2bn roubles in losses. He and several other construction managers were jailed in February 2018.
His son Mikhail was jailed for five-and-a-half years.
The former chief accountant of Dalspetsstroy, Vladimir Ashikhmin, got seven years. The former president of the Khabarovsk regional assembly, Viktor Chudov, got six years.
