Hard Soil Singer

Hero of the on-time completion of Moscow's new subway was until last week Chief Hard-Soil Excavation Engineer Mikhail Ifremov.

"I am a very cheerful man--that's why I am always fortunate!" Engineer Ifremov explained to a Soviet Court before which he was accused of wholesale embezzlement.

Witnesses testified that Cheerful Ifremov squandered 4,200 embezzled rubles --no great sum (see col. 3)--on taxi rides to and from a farm on which he kept pigeons.

"Frequently he would put aside his blueprints," testified another witness. "Then he would take all the telephone receivers off their hooks and sing arias from opera to his bookkeeper who concealed his embezzlements."

The Red Court's sentences: ten years in jail for Moscow's Singing Subway Engineer, five years for Bookkeeper Snetkov.

Before being appointed to excavate hard soil for Russia's first subway, engaging Engineer Ifremov was in charge of the Moscow Department of Mechanical Transport, ran it into a deficit of one million rubles before he was promoted.

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