A CYPRIOT businessman is suing the investigation department of the Russian Interior Ministry, after he was illegally detained and interrogated during his last visit to Moscow on January 20.
George Philippides, who manages the assets and oversees investments of several offshore Russian companies in Cyprus, had flown to Moscow to negotiate a payoff of a loan owed to the Bank of Moscow.
According to Philippides’ lawyer, Christos Clerides, policemen dressed in civilian clothes, barged into his client’s hotel room on the pretext that they were searching for drugs and guns.
The officers confiscated Philippides’ mobile phone, laptop and all his dossiers, including files on other clients.
He was then taken to the police station, where he was interrogated for seven hours “exclusively on the Bank of Moscow loan” Clerides said.
After the mediation of his lawyers, Philippides was freed and was allowed to return to Cyprus, where he consulted the Russian-Cypriot business association and decided to file suit.
Major Russian forestry company Investlesprom, which Philippides represents in Cyprus, was set up by the bank’s former top men Andrey Borodin and Dmitry Akulinin, while the bank remains a considerable shareholder.
The two men were ousted from the bank leadership in 2011, shortly after their close ally, Yuri Luzhkov was driven out of his position as Moscow mayor by President Dmitry Medvedev.
The Russian authorities are suspecting Borodin and Akulinin of abusing their position at the bank to earn over €152 million through the “disappearance of several Investlesprom shares”, as Russian reports comment.
According to the Russian investigators, Philippides was interrogated as a witness with regard to this case but had approached the police on his own accord.
Clerides said that political motives were behind the “horrible treatment” of his client and the persecution of Borodin and Akulinin concerning Investlesprom, since the money from the bank’s loan had not gone missing but was invested.
“Investlesprom had already cleared over half of the debt from the loan and my client was visiting Moscow to arrange the clearance of the rest but suddenly the bank’s new management refused to meet him and proceeded with a criminal investigation” Clerides said.
Clerides said that the clash between Medvedev and Luzhkov had resulted in the bank both launching a criminal investigation against illegal finances and demanding the clearing up of the loan.
“This is clearly a tort case, it has no criminal dimension” Clerides said.
Borodin and Akulinin, who currently reside in London, have a criminal case pending in Russia, concerning charges of alleged large scale-fraud, after an unsecured loan of over €400 million, which was intended for the purchase of some land in Moscow, ended up in the private bank account of Luzhkov’s wife, in an offshore company in Cyprus.
