MOSCOW, December 22 (Itar-Tass) — Investigators are searching offices at the Daev-Plaza business center in the case against former State Duma lawmaker Ashot Yegiazaryan, accused of fraud, a lawyer told Itar-Tass on Thursday.
"At present, searches are underway Daev-Plaza; investigators are checking, and possibly, retrieving the necessary documents within the framework of the investigation of the criminal case against Yegiazaryan," lawyer Ruben Markaryan, who represents the injured parties, said.
Daev-Plaza is located in Daev Pereulok /Lane/, 20.
According to the lawyer, the investigators exposed new episodes in criminal activity of the former lawyer, related to "the embezzlement of large sums of money belonging to a number of persons."
The criminal case against Yegiazaryan was opened on November 6, 2010, after the State Duma stripped Yegiazaryan of the lawmaker's immunity.
On November 24, after repeated summons to turn up for questioning, Yegiazaryan was put on the federal wanted list.
On December 27, 2010, Yegiazaryan was charged in absentia with grand fraud.
Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin earlier said "a check has ascertained that in 2003 and 2003, Yegiazaryan offered his friend Mikhail Ananyev to participate in funding the construction of a trade complex on the Rublyovskoye highway in Moscow and renovate the Moskva Hotel, on the condition of his getting stakes in these facilities commensurate to the invested money."
Yegiazaryan failed to meet his commitments, and used Ananyev's money (more than 500 million roubles) at discretion. The check also found that Yegiazaryan had fraudulently acquired the right to 20 percent of shares in a joint stock company that runs a trade and recreation complex worth over 1.5 billion roubles on the Rublyovskoye highway in Moscow. The shares belonged to Vitaly Smagin, according to the SK spokesman.
In August, 2010, media outlets reported that shareholder of the Europark trade complex Vitaly Smagin filed a statement with the Prosecutor General's Office, in which he claimed that Yegiazaryan had stolen 20 percent of shares of the Centurion Alliance company that belonged to him, which was engaged in construction and administering of the Europark trade complex.
Europark, located at the intersection of the MKAD ring road and the prestigious Rublyovskoye highway, was commissioned in 2005. It is one of the largest in Moscow. In includes the Ashan supermarket and a multiplex cinema and accommodates many companies engaging in recreation business.
Moscow's Basmanny court arrested the shares of the Kammeny Most and Kremlin Site companies which Yegiazaryan controls through an offshore firm.
The two companies are building a multi-purpose complex in the elite area of the Sofiiskaya Embankment opposite the Kremlin. The court also arrested Yegiazaryan's three land plots in the Barvikha district in the Moscow region, and his apartment in Skaterny Pereulok /Lane/ in Moscow.
A court later sanctioned the arrest in absentia of Yegiazaryan's suspected accomplices: director general of Centurion Alliance - MTK Europark Maxim Klochin, Yegiazaryan's aide Vitaly Gogokhiya, and the former lawmaker's brother Artyom.