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Yuri Luzhkov ready to answer summons from investigator

Perhaps, it will be a conversation connected with the investigation of the case of a theft of funds from the Bank of Moscow

MOSCOW, October 24 (Itar-Tass) —— Alexei Melnikov, the lawyer of the ex-mayor, confirmed the report that appeared on Monday that Yuri Luzhkov was summoned by an investigator for a conversation. “I do confirm the fact that law enforcing bodies are interested in having a conversation with Luzhkov,” he told Itar-Tass.

The lawyer stressed that it was going to be “precisely a conversation,” not questioning. The date of the meeting has not yet been fixed. Perhaps, it will be a conversation connected with the investigation of the case of a theft of funds from the Bank of Moscow, the lawyer said. “I don’t know for certain, as the investigator has not told me on what case he was going to talk with Luzhkov,” he said.

“If Yuri Mikhailovich [Luzhkov] is invited to the Investigation Department in the established procedure, being a law-abiding citizen he will certainly answer a summons,” Melnikov said.

The lawyer did not say if Luzkov was presently in Moscow. However, a source among the ex-mayor’s associates told Itar-Tass Luzhkov “was spending large part of his time in Moscow.”

In the framework of the case of the theft of about 13 billion rubles from the Bank of Moscow prosecution charged with fraud the ex-chief of the bank Andrei Borodin and his former first deputy Dmitry Akulin. Both are presently outside Russia and were put on the international wanted list.

According to investigators, Borodin and Akulin, with the complicity of Boris Shemyakin, the president of the Kuznetsky Most Development closed joint stock company; Svetlana Timonina, the director of the Premier Estate closed joint stock company, and a number of other, yet unidentified, accomplices stole funds from the Bank of Moscow, causing damage to the bank in the form of debts on loan commitments to the Premier Estate company to a sum of over 12.5 billion rubles. According to investigators these funds ended up on accounts of the wife of the ex-mayor, Yelena Baturina.

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