MOSCOW, February 18. /TASS/. The defense of the founder of the Baring Vostok equity firm, Michael Calvey, who was detained on February 16 on suspicion of fraud, has filed an appeal against the arrest in the Moscow City Court, his lawyer Dmitry Kletochkin told TASS.
"We have filed an appeal in the Moscow City Court. It will be considered in the appeals instance of the Moscow City Court. We ask to vary the preventive measure for Calvey from detention in custody to house arrest or bail," he said.
As reported earlier Russia’s Investigative Committee initiated the criminal case on suspicion of embezzling 2.5 bln rubles ($37.5 mln) against Calvey and several other employees of Baring Vostok on February 13. Calvey and five other employees have been detained: Vagan Abgaryan, CEO of the First Collection Agency Maxim Vladimirov, head of financial department at independent private investment firm Baring Vostok Capital Partners Philippe Delpal, head of Investments at Baring Vostok Capital Partners, an independent private equity firm, Ivan Zyuzin, Advisor to the Chairman of the Board of Norvik Bank Alexey Kordichev. They are suspected of committing a crime under part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Fraud on a large scale as part of a group).
According to the investigation, Calvey created a criminal scheme. As a result of that scheme the 2.5 bln rubles loan the First Collection Agency received from the Vostochniy bank in 2015 was credited with the assignment of shares. According to investigators, Calvey misled the board of directors of the bank regarding the price of the First Collection Agency’s shares, which were estimated at the amount of debt at a real value of 600,000 rubles and this led to the actual theft of these funds. The criminal case was initiated on the basis of an application by Sherzod Yusupov, a member of the board of directors of Vostochniy Bank filed to the Federal Security Service.
Baring Vostok is one of the largest private equity firms focusing on Russia and the CIS with $3.7 bln in capital. Since 1994, the fund has poured more than $2.4 bln of investments into 70 projects in the areas of financial services, oil and gas, telecommunications and media, and into the consumer sector. Baring Vostok’s projects include CTC Media, Yandex, Avito, Ozon, ER-Telecom, 1C, and Novomet.