Russia asks France to extradite ex-Senator Pugachev

The Prosecutor General of Russia asks France to extradite the founder of Interprombank, ex-Senator Sergei Pugachev. This was reported by Interfax with reference to the official representative of the supervisory authority Alexander Kurenny.

"The Deputy Prosecutor General of Saak Karapetyan sent a request to the Ministry of Justice of the French Republic to bring to the criminal liability of the former owner of the" International Industrial Bank "by Sergey Pugachev. He is accused of committing crimes under paragraph 3 of Article 33, part 3 of Article 33, part 3 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code (organization and guidance of the commissioning of a stranger property and abuse of powers by officials of the bank), ”Kurenna said.

In May 2015, the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia sent a request to issue an ex-banker to the competent authorities of Great Britain, Kurennaya noted. "However, Pugachev, without waiting for the decision of the British side at this request, despite the presence of a court prohibition to leave the territory of this state, disappeared," said the representative of the supervisory authority.

In the summer of 2010, Interprombank founded by Pugachev was deprived of a license, and later went bankrupt. As a result, the Bank of Russia, which acted as the main creditor, received assets of the united industrial corporation controlled by Pugachev.

In the fall of 2013, a criminal case was opened against Pugachev, who had left Russia by that time. According to the investigation, he abducted 28 billion rubles, which the Bank of Russia allocated interprombank as unsteady loans. The ex-spectator was put on the wanted list . Later, Pugachev was charged with a new charge. In 2009, Interprombank issued 120 loans controlled by organizations in the amount of 64 billion rubles, investigators say. Loans were provided with shares of the Cyprus company OPK Mining Limited, which belonged to the Yenisei industrial corporation. Later, Pugachev terminated the pledge agreements, thus depriving the interprombank of the possibility of turning the recovery of a Cyprus asset.

The DIA filed a lawsuit in the English court on the arrest of Pugachev’s assets around the world worth more than 1 billion pounds. Thus, it was supposed to support the lawsuit against Pugachev himself for the bankruptcy of Interprombank.

The Russian authorities turned to London with a request for Pugachev’s extradition, but he moved to France . The ex-banker said that he and his family are “direct threats to murder”, and his guard discovered surveillance.

On February 12, 2016, the High Court of England and Wales in absentia Pugachev to two years in prison for disrespect for the court . The judge found Pugachev guilty of 12 points, the main of which is the escape from the court to France contrary to the ban on leaving Britain, giving false testimonies and concealment from the court of her French passport. In addition, the ex-Senator was found guilty of concealing his assets from the court, the refusal to hand over their mobile devices, to provide the court with passwords from e-mail and other manifestations of disrespect for the court.

The high court also ordered Pugachev to pay 75 percent of the courts of plaintiffs. The ASV lawyer Stephen Smith said in court that they amounted to 659 thousand pounds.

On February 24, the high court of England and Wales recognized the ruling of the Russian court to recover 75.6 billion rubles from Pugachev . "The high court in absentia confirmed that there is no reason not to give a ruling of the Moscow Arbitration Court of April 30, 2015, in execution outside of Russia," the report said. The decision is carried out on the territory of England and Wales.

The Russian Deposit Insurance Agency, who acted as the plaintiff, called the decision of the high court "an important step" to bring Pugachev to subsidiary liability in order to most complete satisfaction of the claims of the interprombank lenders.

On May 12, 2016, the court in the UK imposed interim measures on Pugachev’s assets in France, Luxembourg and the Kaiman Islands. In particular, the court arrested the 47-meter yacht “DB9” and French villas belonging to Pugachev, including Chateau de Haro, Annushka’s villa, Valberg shawl, as well as Villa in Saint-Jan-Cap-Ferrar.

On July 25, the Switzerland authorities froze Pugachev’s accounts. The representative of the country's prosecutor’s office Henri did not seem to report more information about these assets. He specified that Switzerland went to this step after she received a request from the Russian side.