Corruption scandal hits Vladimir Putin's oceanarium On another visit, last year, the Russian leader stopped to shake the flipper of a walrus. However, the Russian president was less happy when he swooped on the project again last week, on his way to the G20 summit in Australia. A Kremlin report on the visit noted that the launch of the oceanarium had been "postponed several times." "Vladimir Putin keeps the construction process under his personal control and several times urged to speed it up," it said. The president had been unimpressed with his latest tour, Russian media said, and afterwards gathered local officials to "read them the riot act" over the delayed construction. Two days later, officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) detained Mr Poplavsky on board a plane at Vladivostok airport. He was then sent to hospital after suffering a suspected stroke. Following an extraordinary court hearing that took place by his hospital bed, an order was given for him to be taken into custody, the state investigative committee announced on Thursday. Mr Poplavsky's lawyer said doctors had raised no objection to her client being arrested but he had yet to be transferred to a pretrial detention centre. The investigative committee said it had confiscated a collection of medals and expensive watches during a search of Mr Poplavsky's premises. The Kremlin claims the oceanarium, run by the Russian Academy of Sciences as a research centre for biologists and oceanographers, will be the biggest of its kind once completed. It will spread over 320,000 square feet and house up to 600 species, including bottle nosed dolphins, beluga whales, pilot whales, sea lions and fur seals.