Moscow’s Basmanny Court has arrested Aleksey Kuznetsov, former finance minister in the government of the Moscow Region. Earlier the court issued an international arrest warrant for him. Now he has been detained in absentia. The ex-minister and his alleged associates - Kuznetsov’s first deputy Valery Nosov, director general of Russian Investment Group LLC Dmitry Kotlyarenko and Moscow’s Trust Company JSC Vladislav Telepnev - face charges of large-scale fraud, which involved embezzlement of assets of state-owned Moscow Region Investment and Trust Company (abbreviated MOITK). The indictment was brought in on 7 July. Next day the Moscow’s Basmanny Court detained Kuznetsov for 2 months in absentia. Kuznetsov has been on international wanted list since he fled from Russia in October 2010.  

The Russian Mafia (rumafia.com) has already reported about Kuznetsov’s machinations with public funds. It all began when Kuznetsov and his associates set up Rosveb firm, the accounts of which were used to accumulate the majority of assets of MOITK. A few months later, Russian Investment Group LLC (owned by Kuznetsov’s wife Janna Bullock) - or RIGroup - bought the shares issued by Rosveb. RIGroup seized 5.5b roubles ($0.2b) worth stake in Rosveb (officially, the group’s director general was Dmitry Kotlyarenko). Besides that, Kuznetsov and Nosov ordered MOITK to allocate 25b roubles ($0.9b) of state funds as loans to phony companies set up by Bullok and Kotlyarenko. As a result, MOITK was made bankrupt, putting the region on the verge of default.

Vladimir Markin, an official of the Russia’s Investigation Committee, said that the evidence had been found of 3.8b roubles ($0.13b) embezzlement of state funds, committed by the above-mentioned people. The investigators had asked a number of states to assist Russia in identifying the location of the embezzled funds, Markin said.