President Putin’s dream of restoring Russia’s space programme to its Soviet-era glory has suffered a fresh blow after state auditors uncovered more than £1 billion worth of financial irregularities at the national space agency last year.
The embarrassing revelation comes hard on the heels of back-to-back rocket launch failures that have shaken international faith in Russia’s space industry and placed billions of dollars in commercial contracts in jeopardy.
Tatyana Golikova, head of Russia’s Audit Chamber, said that she had been surprised by the size of the irregularities at Roscosmos.
“At first I didn’t believe my inspectors, because the value of the financial violations identified was 92 billion roubles [£1.2 billion],” she said. “For me this was an absolute surprise. “
However when she compared the