An irate Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed that officials responsible for embezzling funds used to build the new Vostochny Cosmodrome in eastern Russia close to the Chinese border will be sent to jail.

Putin made the pledge after being forced to wait for a day after the countdown to launch the first rocket from Vostochny was aborted less than two minutes from lift-off. He made the long journey by air to the new cosmodrome located some 5,500 kilometers east of Moscow.

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The embarrassing glitch forced Putin to wait until the next day, April 28, to view from 1.6 kilometers away the launch of the Soyuz 2.1a booster with a payload of three satellites. The satellites, Lomonosov, Aist-2D and SamSat-218, were safely orbited.

Vostochny is the first civilian rocket launch site on Russian territory. By building it, Russia seeks to cut its reliance on the historic Baikonur cosmodrome located in Kazakhstan.

Putin was quoted by Interfax as saying "the malfunction, as far as I understand, is not due to the condition of the cosmodrome, but to the rocket itself."

The project to build the cosmodrome, however, has been plagued by charges of massive corruption and price gouging. Directors of three project subcontractors were arrested on charges of corruption.

"Six criminal cases had to be launched, in which four people were arrested. Two of them, however, are under house arrest, while the other two are in pre-trial detention," said Putin.

"But if their guilt of the suspected of crimes is proven, they'll have to swap their warm beds at home for prison bunks."

A government audit in 2014 blamed Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, for financial irregularities worth $1.4 billion during the construction of Vostochny. It discovered officials had overstated the cost of building the cosmodrome by 20 percent.

Putin congratulated the spaceport staff after the successful but delayed launch.

"This is just the first stage of enormous work, and everything you were supposed to do you did brilliantly," he said.

TagsPresident Vladimir Putin, Vostochny Cosmodrome, v, Soyuz 2.1a booster, roscosmos