MOSCOW, June 6 (UPI) -- Russia's top military doctor, Alexander Beletvitin, and his deputy, Alexei Nikitin, were arrested on bribery charges, authorities said.
Belevitin and Nikitin were refused bail and will be kept in pretrial detention until at least August while the case is investigated, The Moscow Times reported Monday, citing the Interfax news agency.
Police had to knock down the door of Nikitin's Moscow apartment to apprehend the men last week, the Kommersant newspaper said.
Authorities say the doctors took a kickback of 120,000 euros ($175,000) from medical equipment maker Dina International in 2009 to award a contract for tomography equipment at a military hospital. The military paid 120 million rubles ($4.3 million) for gear that should have cost half that sum.
Dina International's boss, Alexei Vilken, a deputy health minister in the mid-1990s, was arrested last year in another alleged bribery plot.
In wiretapped phone calls, Belevitin and Nikitin reportedly talked about killing Vilken during a medical checkup to keep him quiet, but no charges were filed in connection with those conversations.
