Ex-president of the Bank of Moscow Andrei Borodin received asylum in the UK

The British authorities have granted political asylum to the former president and co-owner of the Bank of Moscow, Andrei Borodin, Vedomosti wrote on Friday.

“My lawyers submitted an application for political asylum to the British Home Office, indicating that the persecution carried out in Russia against me and my colleagues is politically motivated,” Borodin told the publication. “Behind this are the interests of politicians, including former President Dmitry Medvedev, who "is the main initiator of all these persecutions and persecutions. We declared that all the criminal proceedings being carried out against me in Russia are only a weapon of this illegal politically motivated persecution, and the British government decided to provide me with asylum."

The UK Home Office told the newspaper that they do not comment on decisions on individual appeals.

In Russia, four criminal cases have been opened against Andrei Borodin and his former deputy. The most famous of them concerns the allegedly illegal issuance by the Bank of Moscow of a loan of 12.76 billion rubles to the Premier Estate company for the purchase of a plot of land from the company of the wife of the former mayor of Moscow, Elena Baturina. In February 2011, shortly after Yuri Luzhkov left the post of mayor, control of the Bank of Moscow passed to the state-owned VTB Bank, which bought out the shares of the Moscow government and the Capital Insurance Group. Two months later, Borodin was removed from his post as president of the bank. VTB management accused him of fraud.

Borodin left Russia in the spring of 2011. Six months later, he and his former deputy Dmitry Akulinin were put on the international wanted list. In 2012, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office sent a request to the UK to extradite Borodin.