MOSCOW, February 13 (Itar-Tass) — The wife of the former Moscow mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, Yelena Baturina, plans to arrive to Moscow as soon as the date of a trial for a multibillion rouble bank fraud is finalized, her lawyer Alexander Asnis told Itar-Tass on Monday.
“Soon after Yelena Nikolayevna [Baturina] gets a summons for questioning as a witness and coordinates the date, of course, she will arrive in Moscow,” he said.
“We are satisfied that the Interior Ministry’s Investigation Department announced that Baturina will get a summons for questioning, under which she will have a 15-day immunity from persecution as a witness,” he said.
Baturina is summoned as a witness in a fraud case against the president of the Bank of Moscow, Andrei Borodin, and his former first deputy Dmitry Akulinin, who are charged with embezzling 12.5 billion roubles belonging to the bank. Later these funds were found on the accounts of Baturina’s real estate company Inteko.
Yuri Luzhkov who was fired from his mayoral post by President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010 was also questioned several times over this case.