MOSCOW, June 5 (Itar-Tass) — Investigators are retrieving documents at the Respublikansky commercial bank within the probe into the case against former State Duma lawmaker Ashot Yegiazaryan and his agent Vitaly Gogokhiya, accused of grand fraud, a lawyer of one of the injured parties told Itar-Tass.
"Investigative Committee personnel probing the criminal case against the former lawmaker, and detectives from the police department for combating economic crimes are searching offices of the Respublikansky commercial bank and retrieving documents," lawyer Ruben Markaryan said.
Earlier, the bank was controlled by the Invest Center company belonging to businessmen Mikhail Ananyev and Dmitry Garkusha. At present, they are injured parties in the criminal case.
The investigators said Yegiazaryan and Gogokhiya had cheated Ananyev into registering 80,000 of Invest Center shares to the persons designated by Yegiazaryan, including his wife Natalia Tsagolova and de-facto chief of his security Vladimir Zaitsev. After assuming control over the bank, Yegiazaryan embezzled 20 million dollars.
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.