The chief constructor or Russia’s Glonass satellite navigation system, Yury Urlichich, was fired over a big corruption scandal.

      GLONASS is a radio-based satellite navigation system, which has become one of the major projects of Russian space sphere throughout the past decade. The Russia’s rival to GPS was rocked by fraud allegations earlier this month, with the Interior Ministry accusing unnamed Glonass officers of embezzling 6.5 billion rubles ($200 million) of program’s funds.

      Investigators claim that the RSS management signed contracts with private companies to implement projects, but in reality they themselves did the job and got the money. No charges have been reported against Urlichich yet.

      The embezzled money is 5.6% of the total financing of 116.9 billion rubles. The new GLONASS development program includes more 300 billion rubles to be implemented into the system by 2020.