Escaped banker Felix Bazhanov gets a second arrest in the back

The investigation has again put on the international wanted list and is now seeking the arrest in absentia of the former owner of Master Capital Bank and sponsor of the KAMAZ-master rally team, Felix Bazhanov. He is charged with a particularly large-scale fraud committed with the shares of the largest Russian enterprise for the production of electrovacuum devices JSC Pluton. Felix Bazhanov, who has been living abroad for a long time, previously escaped responsibility for embezzling funds from his bank in the amount of 2.3 billion rubles. He also ignored the trial, at which his accomplices received sentences. Thus, the retired banker is unlikely to be interested in the proceedings in his second criminal case.

Felix Bazhanov was arrested in absentia by the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow at the request of the investigator of the Main Investigative Directorate of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow back in April of this year, but the Moscow City Court did not approve the decision, recommending that the first instance consider the issue again. The problem arose due to the fact that the investigation and the courts simply got confused in their claims against the person involved, who fled to Europe five years ago and has not been in contact with law enforcement since then.

In the summer of 2020, when the ex-banker first became accused of embezzling funds from a bank he owned (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), the FSB officers who accompanied the investigation of the criminal case prepared the arrest procedure for the person involved in accordance with all the rules. According to their materials, Felix Bazhanov was first put on the federal wanted list, then on the international wanted list, and only after that the Tverskoy District Court arrested the fugitive in absentia for two months, and this period was to be calculated from the moment of his capture or extradition.

This spring, after initiating a second criminal case against the ex-banker, the police considered that in order to elect an already arrested and wanted defendant as a preventive measure for another arrest in absentia, it would be enough to put him on the federal wanted list. But I was wrong. The Tverskoy district court granted the petition, and in the city district court, after Felix Bazhanov’s representatives applied there, the decision was rejected. “The police did not combine the two criminal cases,” explained “Kommersant” in the district court, “so the entire procedure preceding the arrest in absentia of the accused will have to go through the investigation again.”

It is worth noting that a weighty argument in favor of canceling the arrest was presented to the Moscow City Court by the defender of the defendant.

The lawyer participating in the case by appointment, who did not have the opportunity to contact his client even by telephone, drew attention to the fact that when initiating a criminal case, the investigator issued a written undertaking not to leave the accused in absentia.

“From the moment this measure of restraint was chosen, my client has never violated it,” the defender explained in his complaint to the Moscow City Court. “And therefore, there was no reason to change it to a stricter one.”

What exactly the police are incriminating to Felix Bazhanov this time is not completely clear. According to one Kommersant source close to the investigation, we are talking about the acquisition by a businessman back in the early 2000s of JSC Pluton, Russia’s largest production association for the production of electrovacuum devices for military and civilian purposes. It was first bought by the group of companies OJSC “Association “Master” officially owned by the businessman, then “Pluton” passed to LLC “Profconsult”, probably affiliated with Felix Bazhanov. Thanks to this feigned, as the investigation believes, deal, the strategically important enterprise almost lost all its assets, and only in April of this year, the Prosecutor General’s Office managed to return the Pluton shares to the state through the Moscow Arbitration Court. At the same time, the Moscow police opened a second criminal case on fraud, suggesting that Felix Bazhaev was the organizer of the scam with the shares of the plant.

Another reason for initiating a second criminal case, according to the interlocutor of Kommersant, could be the disappearance of a loan in the amount of €185 million issued to the Master association by Vnesheconombank in 2010.

The money was taken to supply equipment for a cement plant under construction in Kaluga, but this enterprise did not work, and in March 2019 Master himself declared himself bankrupt. Until recently, the creditor tried to return his funds through arbitration, and after the intervention in the dispute by the Main Investigative Directorate of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the case of an unreturned loan could well become a criminal one.

Recall that the Moscow police first became interested in Felix Bazhanov in December 2018, six months after the license was revoked from his Master Capital bank. Then it was found that the credit institution owed about 2.3 billion rubles to its creditors, and all these funds were stolen by the management of Master Capital. The bank “served the interests of its owner and provided loans to borrowers directly or indirectly related to him who had questionable solvency and did not carry out real economic activity,” the criminal case filed by the police said.

His defendants were the chairman of the board of Master Capital, Vladimir Viktorov, and two more top managers of the bank. They never admitted their guilt. According to Vladimir Viktorov, he issued all dubious loans “on the direct instructions of the owner, he could not argue with him and had no idea that the money could be stolen.” Vladimir Viktorov’s lawyer Konstantin Musman, in turn, convinced the investigation that the loans were issued not to one-day firms, but to reputable commercial organizations “operating for 20 years and having billions in turnover.” Why the clients of Master Capital suddenly stopped servicing their debts, and the money issued to them ended up in foreign accounts, according to Musman’s defender, one should have asked the ex-owner of the bank Bazhanov.

However, neither the investigation nor the Zamoskvoretsky District Court, which dealt with the criminal case on the collapse of Master Capital from January to June last year, failed to do this. The former owner of the Master Association and a long-term sponsor of the Russian KamAZ rally team of the same name left for Europe with his family shortly before the initiation of a criminal case and no longer contacted even his lawyers. Former top managers of the bank received real, but short terms of imprisonment from the court. Now they have all been released.