A bankruptcy petition has been filed at a Russian court against the factory that produces the famed Kalashnikov assault rifle, the country's biggest rifle producer, reports said Tuesday.

The petition against weapons producer Izhmash was accepted for examination by an arbitration court in Udmurtiya, the Russian region where the assault rifles are produced, the Gazeta newspaper and Interfax news agency reported.

The court's hearing into the petition will take place on October 7, they quoted the court as saying.

The petition was brought by a company in the regional capital of Izhevsk called Gremikha. But its link to the weapons maker was not made clear by the arbitration court.

Izhmash makes the famed Kalishnikov, the world's best known assault rifle, which was developed by Mikhail Kalashnikov in the 1940s under the Soviet Union and is used by armies and irregular forces throughout the world.

Gazeta said that despite its fame the company, which is 57 percent owned by state firm Russian Technologies, has not been spared the effects of the economic crisis amid plummeting orders for defence goods.

According to the paper, it has built up 400 million rubles (13 million dollars) of overdue debts.

earlier related report

Top Russian general faces investigation: reports

A Russian general who earned a reputation for brutality in Chechnya faces an inquiry over a report that he used soldiers to interfere with a criminal investigation, news agencies said on Tuesday.

The probe into General Vladimir Shamanov was announced after the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that he had sent special forces under his command to prevent a search of a factory owned by his son-in-law.

Shamanov's son-in-law is a wanted fugitive who has been described in media reports as a prominent member of an organised crime group.

"An internal investigation is being carried out in connection with an array of published reports regarding V. Shamanov," Alexei Kuznetsov, a spokesman for Russia's defence minister, told the Interfax news agency.

No further details were given about the investigation of Shamanov, the head of Russia's paratroopers and an former governor of the Ulyanovsk region of central Russia.

Shamanov was appointed in May to lead the paratroopers despite having been criticised by human rights groups for abuses in the 1999-2000 war in Chechnya, and despite his son-in-law's alleged links to organised crime.

The defence ministry inquiry appeared to have been triggered by a report in Novaya Gazeta on Monday, in which the newspaper published transcripts of wiretaps of Shamanov's telephone conversations from August 18.

In a profanity-laced call to one of his subordinates, Shamanov told him to dispatch two special forces units to a factory north of Moscow to "intern" a senior investigator conducting a search, according to the transcripts.

Novaya Gazeta said the factory was owned by Shamanov's son-in-law Anatoly Khramushin, whom investigators believe is a member of the "Tatar" organised crime group and suspect in the 2006 attempted murder of a businessman.

The newspaper, which posted audio files of the conversations on its website, said it had obtained the recordings as well as official documents concerning the case from investigators.

Shamanov, when contacted by Novaya Gazeta for comment, said that he would only speak to journalists about military matters and refused to discuss his "personal life."

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