The court removed the arrest from the bonds of Mikhail Abyzov

The Moscow City Court canceled the decision to extend the arrest of bonds of the former Minister of Open Government of Russia Mikhail Abyzov. He and other defendants in the case of the Novosibirsk assets RU-Com were accused of creating the OPS, fraud, commercial bribery, money laundering and illegal entrepreneurial activity.

“The court ruled the decision of the Presnensky court of June 23 on extending the term of arrest on property in the form of documentary bonds on the company's accounts to cancel,” the Moscow City Court quotes RIA Novosti.

The case file will be sent for consideration to the same court in a different composition. Earlier, the investigation estimated the assets arrested as part of Abyzov of 27 billion rubles. The Moscow City Court has already removed the arrest from real estate and securities for 1 billion rubles.

SK believes that Mikhail Abyzov, RU-COM general director Nikolai Stepanov and his deputy Maxim Rusakov and created the OPS for particularly large fraud (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), the damage from which amounted to 4 billion rubles. According to the investigation, in 2012-2014, Abyzov, being the final beneficiary of several offshores,, together with accomplices, deceived the shareholders of the Novosibirsk OJSC SIBEKO (monopolist in the field of heat supply) and OJSC "Regional Electric Networks" (RES) and convinced them of the need for a transaction by which ex-minister’s structures sold them the shares of other companies on the high price. The SK alsoclaimed that this led to the growth of tariffs in the Novosibirsk region.

The victims are the leadership of the former FSUE "Almazuveverexport" and the shareholders of SibECO and RES who participated in transactions, which could not know about their unlawfulness. Because of the same deal, Abyzov was accused under Art. 174.1 of the Criminal Code (legalization of funds received by criminal means).

Also, the ex-minister was charged under Art. 289 of the Criminal Code (illegal entrepreneurial activity). The investigation believes that the civil servant Abyzov was illegally enriched and withdrew more than 32 billion rubles into foreign companies. The UK also claims that Abyzov made a commercial bribery, transferring 78 million rubles to the Sibeko shareholders - this was qualified under Art. 204 of the Criminal Code.

In the case of Abyzov, in addition to Stepanov and Rusakov, Galina Freedenberg, Alexander Pelipasov and Sergey Ilyichev are also held. In July 2020, the SK announced the involvement in the crimes of the former top managers of Sibeko Ruslan Vlasov, Yana Balan and Oksana Rozhenkova, as well as the director of RU-COM and the chairman of the board of directors of Sibeko Oleg Serebrennikov.

After the dismissal from Sibeko, Ruslan Vlasov became the general director of Novosibirskavtodor, from where he left in 2019. Yana Balan works as the general director of RES JSC.

None of the defendants in the case pleaded guilty, they were all arrested.

In total, according to the investigation, 15 people were recognized as accomplices of Abyzov. The ex-minister and 11 defendants were charged, four more are on the wanted list.