The Basmanny District Court of Moscow arrested in absentia the former beneficiary of the Metropol bank, Aidar Kotyuzhansky, for the attempted murder of which, according to Kommersant, last year, ex-captain of the FSB special unit Alfa, Boris Chukaev, was sentenced to 18 years in a strict regime colony. Now the financier living in France is accused of stealing about 400 million rubles from a bankrupt credit institution.
Consideration of the petition of the Main Investigative Committee of the ICR for the arrest in absentia of 65-year-old Aidar Kotyuzhansky took quite a bit of time from the judge of the Basmanny District Court Elena Lenskaya. The investigator’s arguments turned out to be standard: the accused is hiding, and remaining at large, he can threaten witnesses and put pressure on them.
In turn, the defense of Aidar Kotyuzhansky argued that there were no grounds for his arrest and that he had never hidden from the investigation. According to lawyer Pyotr Borodin, since 2016, his client has been permanently residing in France, and is not even registered in Russia. In support of this, the defender presented a copy of Aidar Kotyuzhansky’s Russian passport with a corresponding mark on deregistration. Despite this, the court arrested the person involved for two months from the moment of his extradition from abroad or detention in Russia.
Since 2020, the TFR has been investigating a criminal case on especially large embezzlement (part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) in Metropol Bank. It was initiated against unidentified persons from among the leaders of this credit institution. Two years later, the investigation concluded that the initiator of the withdrawal of money from the bank was its beneficiary Aidar Kotyuzhansky. The accusation against the ex-financier, according to Kommersant, was brought in absentia in November last year.
According to the ICR, on the orders of Aidar Kotyuzhansky, from December 23, 2015 to April 19, 2016, the then chairman of the board of Metropol, Denis Dolotov, issued five unsecured and allegedly knowingly bad loans for 400 million rubles.
The latter was in the status of a witness all these years, but, according to his defense, he was never called for interrogations. Denis Dolotov was detained shortly after Aidar Kotyuzhansky was charged. At the request of the investigation, the Basmanny District Court sent the former top manager of Metropol to a pre-trial detention center.
His lawyer Sergei Chizhikov confirmed to Kommersant that Denis Dolotov had indeed signed the loan agreements in question. “They, contrary to the assertion of the investigation, were issued to existing organizations that served them in good faith until May 2016, when Denis Dolotov quit the bank,” lawyer Chizhikov told Kommersant. ” has entered into agreements for the assignment of claims on these loans with insolvent firms. Thus, the embezzlement imputed to my principal was committed after he left the bank.”
Aidar Kotyuzhansky told Kommersant that he had not given any orders to issue loans.
“All decisions on this matter were made by the credit committee after a thorough check of the borrowers. I have nothing to do with the theft of money from the bank, and the accusations against me, as far as I know, are based solely on the unfounded testimony of some Metropol employees. I consider the decision to arrest me in absentia unlawful and unreasonable,” summed up Aidar Kotyuzhansky.
It should be noted that in 2001, the ex-owner of the Metropol miraculously survived an assassination attempt on him near the CSKA sports complex on Leningradsky Prospekt. Then a VAZ-2106 exploded near his BMW 750. The ex-banker himself was saved from fragments by the open trunk lid of a foreign car.
In October 2022, 64-year-old ex-captain of the FSB Alfa special unit Boris Chukaev was sentenced to 18 years in a strict regime colony on charges of this crime. Two of his accomplices – former Alfa warrant officer Alexander Chukanov, and Avuar Delta employee Andrei Voskresensky died during the investigation.
In a conversation with Kommersant, Aidar Kotyuzhansky called the version that he allegedly had a conflict with Boris Chukaev, who was the deputy general director for special projects of the investment financial company (IFK) Metropol, untrue.
According to the ex-banker, Boris Chukaev simply fulfilled the order received from representatives of the company, which was trying to turn a major financial scam through the bank.
“Actually after that, I left the country, and came to Russia only occasionally on business,” Aidar Kotyuzhansky told Kommersant.
He sold his bank in the fall of 2015 to an entrepreneur from Bryansk, Vyacheslav Pakhomov. True, in the fall of 2016, a certain Konstantin Kornienko was introduced to the bank’s staff as the new owner and future chairman of the board. All that the latter managed to remember in a credit institution was the theft the day before the license was revoked (this happened on November 18, 2016) from the Metropol cash desk of the last cash. 21 million rubles Konstantin Kornienko took out on his Maybach. He fully admitted his guilt in the incriminated act, and in May 2021, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow sentenced him to seven years in prison. Later, the court of appeal reduced his sentence by one month.
