The Investigation Department of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs closed the case of Vladimir Kekhman, accused of illegally obtaining loans, in the 60th month of the investigation, writes Kommersant , citing sources. Kekhman is the founder of one of the largest fruit importers, JFC, whose companies have been going through bankruptcy proceedings since 2012.

Kekhman and his two alleged accomplices, former JFC top managers Andrei Afanasyev and Yulia Zakharova, were accused of particularly large-scale lending fraud and laundering proceeds from crime. According to the publication, senior investigator for especially important cases of the Department for Investigation of Organized Criminal Activities of the SD of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Dmitry Grishin, with the sanction of the leadership, on November 14 terminated the criminal case “for lack of corpus delicti” and canceled the travel restrictions for the accused.

On the same day, Grishin opened a case against Afanasyev and Zakharova for illegally obtaining loans (Part 1 of Article 176 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), and on November 17, similar charges were brought against Kekhman, the newspaper writes. We were talking about the same 20.2 billion rubles that were received as loans in 2010–2011. companies that were part of the JFC group.

Article 176 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation falls into the category of crimes of medium gravity; the statute of limitations for such crimes is six years. The last illegal loan to a JFC group company was dated November 3, 2011, thus, the newspaper writes, the investigator had grounds to terminate this case due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. According to Kommersant, after receiving signatures from the defendants agreeing to terminate the case, it was closed on November 21, and on the same day the seizure of property that once belonged to the JFC group companies was lifted. These are nine apartments on Moskovsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, an oil depot in the village of Shushary and a sawmill in Kazan. Also, the former defendants must return the jewelry and money seized from them as part of the case, the newspaper notes: thus, Zakharova will receive $90,000, which was kept in a special account of the Ministry of Internal Affairs after the seizure.

The media reported the termination of the criminal prosecution of Kekhman