NEWSLINK: Russian Prosecutor General’s Office to continue its legal actions to bring Berezovsky’s criminally acquired assets back to Russia
[Russian Prosecutor General’s Office to continue its legal actions to bring Berezovsky’s criminally acquired assets back to Russia – ITAR-TASS – March 25, 2013 – http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c32/686220.html]
ITAR-TASS reports on Russian efforts to seize assets of exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, recently found dead under undetermined circumstances in Britain, where he had been granted political asylum.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office alleges that the assets were obtained criminally, which ITAR-TASS seems to be relaying as fact:
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office will continue its legal actions to bring Boris Berezovsky’s criminally acquired assets back to Russia.
‘As the Russian Criminal Code envisages a confiscation of property for forming and participation in a criminal community, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office will continue its legal actions, which are aimed at bringing back to Russia the assets, which Berezovsky and his accomplices illegally acquired and legalized abroad,’ Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Zvyagintsev said on Monday.
He recalled that during the investigation of the criminal case Berezovsky was brought to justice as a defendant for several heinous economic crimes, which he committed as a member of the transnational criminal community.
* * *
… Berezovsky was charged in absentia in the criminal case over the misappropriation in a fraud of the assets to the tune of over 200 million roubles from the open joint stock company Aeroflot in 1999 and a guilty verdict was passed against Berezovsky, who was sentenced to six years in prison. Berezovsky was sentenced to 13 years in prison in another criminal case over the property misappropriation from the open joint stock company AvtoVAZ to the tune of over 50 billion non-denominated roubles that was merged with the criminal case over the illegal confiscation of the land plot, which belonged to the state unitary enterprise Holiday Home Zhukovka.
ITAR-TASS also reports on allegations for which Berezovsky apparently was merely accused, including political activity critical of Russian Presiden Vladimir Putin:
… Meanwhile, Berezovsky was accused of misappropriation of the monetary assets of the open joint stock company AKB SbS-AGRO (the joint stock commercial bank) to the tune of over 13 million dollars and money laundering, as well as deliberate denunciation against a person, who allegedly committed a heinous crime, the appeals to masterminding massive disorders, which were in the texts posted in the Internet, including ‘The open letter to those people not born in the Soviet Union’ and ‘Arrest Putin. Restore the constitutional order.’
ITAR-TASS also reports on attempts by the Russian government to implicate Berezovsky in some kind of agreement to relieve Chechen warlords of criminal responsibility, apparently followed by a prosecution of Berezovsky for the crimes of the warlords:
‘Meanwhile, Berezovsky is accused of the offence that at the post of the deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, he signed an agreement with Chechen warlords Raduyev and Basayev that resulted in relieving these criminals, who committed grave crimes, from criminal responsibility. The foresaid criminal cases were merged in one criminal case and Berezovsky was brought to justice as the defendant,’ the Russian Investigation Committee stated before.
In yet another legal assault on Berezovsky, the Russian government sought extradition of Berezovsky back to Russia in connection with the investigation of the assassination of a Duma member. But British authorities refused to extradite precisely because Berezovsky had been granted political asylum.
Click here for full article: http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c32/686220.html