MOSCOW (Reuters) -The former deputy chief of the Russian army's General Staff was sentenced to 17 years in prison on Monday over a scheme involving the theft of over 1 billion roubles ($12.7 million) from Defence Ministry contracts, the TASS news agency reported.

A closed-door military court found Khalil Arslanov, a colonel general, and others guilty of stealing some 1.6 billion roubles from state contracts with Voentelecom, a company that provides telecommunications services and equipment to the Russian military.

Arslanov was also found guilty of extorting a 12 million rouble bribe from the head of a military communications company.

Two other men, Colonel Pavel Kutakhov, and Igor Yakovlev, whom TASS described as a military pensioner, were found guilty alongside Arslanov and received seven and six years in prison, respectively.

A former head of the Russian military's communications unit, Arslanov served as deputy chief of the army's General Staff from 2013 until he was removed from office in 2020. He was named a colonel general in 2017.

Russia has stepped up prosecutions of top defence officials as a series of corruption scandals have engulfed the highest echelons of the Russian military establishment in the past year.

This month, former deputy defence minister Timur Ivanov was sentenced to 13 years on corruption charges, the harshest sentence yet in the string of graft cases.

($1 = 78.6955 roubles)