MOSCOW, December 13 (Itar-Tass) — The Moscow City Court on December 19 will review the legitimacy of the arrest of entrepreneur Viktor Baturin, accused of attempted fraud involving promissory notes of the INTEKO company.
"The Moscow City Court will review Baturin's cassational appeal at 12:00, Moscow time, on December 19," spokeswoman for the Tverskoi court Yekaterina Ilyina told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.
On November 30, the Tverskoi court sanctioned Baturin's arrest. Explaining the decision, the judge said there were no reasons for a softer measure of restraint. Baturin will remain in custody until January 28, 2012.
Earlier the businessman’s lawyer Igor Shabanov said the defense had asked the appeals aboard to overturn the resolution by the Tverskoi court and select a measure of restraint other than custody.
Baturin, brother of former Moscow mayor's wife, has been charged with attempted grand fraud.
According to the investigator, on November 28, he presented a false promissory note of the INTEKO company at its office in Sadovaya-Spasskaya Street, 28. It was worth 10.8 million roubles, and Baturin demanded immediate payment.
INTEKO personnel had misgivings regarding the authenticity of the promissory note. They called police who detained Viktor Baturin.
"One can conclude from the defendant's testimony that he was aware that the security was not authentic. In addition, he stated he had signed this promissory note at director order of INTEKO president, his sister Yelena Baturina, and that there were several such promissory notes in his office," the Interior Ministry's main office reported.
Baturin denied his guilt. "My client denies guilt of any fraud; he believes INTEKO vice-president Oleg Soloshchansky slandered him," Shabanov said.
According to Baturin, is impossible to forge a promissory note in principle, as it can only be issued in a single copy.
"I came to INTEKO to recover the debt with this promissory note. I’m an injured party who has been robbed," he said. He is confident that he would win the case and receive money from the company that belongs to his sister.
Meanwhile, Shabanov assumes that there were no fraudsters, but "an economic dispute between Baturin and INTEKO, whose president Oleg Soloshchansky /according to the lawyer, Soloshchansky is president of the company, although its site still lists as its president Yelena Baturina, the wife of former Moscow mayor - eds Itar-Tass/ tried to not to pay a debt under a promissory note by calling law-enforcement bodies to intervene.
"The promissory note is economically justified, it was issued in 2000 on the strength of a contract for an earlier loan, which INTEKO was unable to repay to another legal entity. It was a normal financial operation," Shabanov said.
The lawyer said Viktor Baturin believes "Soloshchansky is cheating not only him, but his sister Yelena Baturina," and does not rule out that Soloshchansky is in collusion with a third party.
Baturin's press secretary Anna Imerlin said his ex-wife Yana Rudkovskaya had taken their underage children to her home after his arrest. "The children are with Yana, and Viktor Nikolayevich does not object," she said.
In June 2011, Moscow's Presnya court gave Baturin a three-year suspended sentence for real estate fraud.
The entrepreneur did not challenge the decision acknowledging that the verdict did not evoke any special emotions in him.
"A verdict is a verdict; a severe reprimand on record; nothing to worry about," he said then.
He expressed the opinion that the case against him had been doctored and that it was connected to Yuri Luzhkov's resignation and Yelena Baturina's financial dispute. He did not rule out new criminal cases against him.