A Russian businessman who embezzled submarine funding turns up dead in jail

A businessman arrested for embezzling more than 100 million rubles ($1.8 million) from funds allocated to the construction of submarines was found dead in pretrial detention on Monday. 

Valery Pshenichny was left alone in a jail cell for an hour on February 5, and guards say they found him dead when they returned. The local human rights commission told the magazine RBC that Pshenichny apparently killed himself.

Meanwhile, a source told the news agency Interfax that Pshenichny had complained that he wasn’t feeling well, before his death. “He said himself that he might die there in the jail cell,” the source said. According to the website Fontanka.ru, inmates in the neighboring cell didn’t notice any signs that Pshenichny wanted to kill himself.

Valery Pshenichny was the general director of the company “Novit Pro,” which is fulfilling a government contract with Admiralty Shipyard to build Improved Kilo-class submarines.

On January 18, police arrested Pshenichny and Admiralty Shipyard deputy chief engineer Gleb Emelchenkov on suspicion of overstating the cost for developing a three-dimensional model of the ship’s hull, service system, and other equipment. Both Pshenichny and Emelchenkov denied the charges.