MOSCOW, May 24 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko) – Russian investigators have arrested former head of the Seventh Studio stage company Yury Itin and ex-chief accountant Nina Maslyayeva on suspicion of embezzling about 200 million rubles (about $3.5 million) allocated for promotion of art, press service of the Investigative Committee announced on Wednesday.

The Investigative Committee launched a large-scale fraud case.

Earlier, police have raided the Gogol Center, a popular contemporary theater in Moscow, as part of investigation into the case. Searches have also been conducted in premises of the theater’s artistic director, Kirill Serebrennikov.  Later, he was questioned as a witness in the case.

According to investigators, from 2011 to 2014, unidentified persons from management of the Seventh Studio, a stage company created by Serebrennikov on the basis of his acting and directing course in the Moscow Art Theatre School, embezzled budget funds allocated by the government for development and popularization of art in Russia.

Serebrennikov is Russia’s stage and film director. He was appointed as artistic director of the Gogol Center in 2012.