Switzerland will sue the top managers of Gazprom

Switzerland will sue the former Gazprom board member Bogdan Budzulyak and the current top manager of the company Alexander Shaikhutdinov. On Wednesday, December 10, reports Tages Anzeiger .

The trial of Budzulyak and Shaikhutdinov will begin in the spring of 2015. They are suspected of receiving bribes during the construction of the Yamal -Europe gas pipeline. Budzulyak lawyer Philip Kurov announced the completion of the investigation. Now the former Gazprom board member is waiting for an indictment. Kurov said that he was afraid of the "political motivation" of the investigation.

Bank accounts of the accused were frozen back in 2010. On December 8, the court refused to defrost the Budzulik accounts, at which, according to the newspaper, there is $ 1.3 million.

According to investigators, three large European companies - ABB, Alstom and Siemens - gave bribes to Gazprom managers for “consultations” and received advantageous contracts related to the construction of the Yamal -Europe gas pipeline. The alleged corruption payments passed through the Cyprus offshore Burlingame Consulting Limited., And then through one Swiss bank, so the investigation is conducted by the Swiss prosecutor’s office, Berner Zeitung reports.

According to Vedomosti , the other two defendants in this case are the former president of the representative office of the ABB Russia company Mikhail Chesnakov and the former head of the ABB Russia and Alsta Russia Vladimir Ushakov.

The investigation, in particular, established that Siemens Siemens Siemens Industrial Turbomachine (SIT) in 2004-2006, receiving turbines for gas distribution stations of the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline, paid consultations, which were involved in Gazprom top managers.

Investigators believe that consultations could be a veiled bribe. The suspects themselves are sure that the consultations were legal, and believe that the investigation has a political background. The case against SIT did not reach the court, the investigation was terminated, and Siemens in return shared information and paid compensation, and also made a contribution of 104,000 euros to the International Red Cross Committee.

The investigation against four suspects continues. NRC Handelsblad writes that, according to the Swiss side, the corruption scheme began to be used since the late 1990s, when SIT has not yet been part of Siemens. The consultation fee was about 2-3% of the contract amount. From 2004 to 2006, according to the investigation, to $ 3.8 million, they received even more to the suspect accounts.