A Moscow court has ordered the arrest of the current and former heads of Russian drone maker Drone Solutions, Vyacheslav Barbasov and Irakli Khazaliya, the newspaper Kommersant reported.
The Kuzminsky District Court in Moscow issued the ruling on August 8. Barbasov, the company's current general director, and Khazaliya, his predecessor, were taken into custody. Both face charges of especially large-scale fraud, which carries a prison sentence of up to ten years. Details of the criminal case have not been disclosed.
Drone Solutions, registered in Moscow, has worked since 2018 on research and development of unmanned aerial systems, related software and neural network based computer vision. The company has said its drones are more efficient than standard models and can operate in any climate, making them suitable for aerial monitoring of oil and gas infrastructure, tracking fire outbreaks and security work.
Earlier case
It was previously reported that Alla Polovchenya, deputy head of the unmanned systems and robotics department at Russia's Ministry of Industry and Trade, and two senior managers from the EFKO group of companies were detained in Moscow. That case concerns a project to build UAV systems, in which the suspects allegedly bought drones in China and presented them as their own designs.
