The Moscow City Court commuted the verdict in the high-profile Baring Vostok case of embezzlement of 2.5 billion rubles, which, according to the investigation, took place in Vostochny Bank. According to a Business FM correspondent, American investor Michael Calvey’s sentence has been reduced from 5.5 years of probation to 4.5 years. The court reduced the punishment for other defendants by an average of six months or a year.
The court of second instance began to consider the appeal on the fifth attempt. Prior to this, the hearings had been postponed since March 24 for various reasons. At first, due to the non-appearance of the convicts – the founder of the Baring Vostok investment fund, Michael Calvey, and the partner of the fund, Philippe Delpal. Their lawyers said that the defendants were trying to get visas to Russia. Later, both sent notices stating that they did not object to the consideration of the case in their absence. Other convicts did not appear in court either.
In the appeal, six of the seven defendants asked to cancel the verdict of the Meshchansky Court of the capital and acquit them. However, if this was not possible, they agreed to a mitigation of the punishment.
In the complaints announced by the reporting judge, the lawyers indicated that there was no corpus delicti in the actions of their clients, there were no signs of an organized group in the case, and gross procedural violations were committed during the initiation and consideration of the case.
Insisting on the annulment of the verdict, Michael Calvey’s lawyer, Timofey Gridnev, argued that there was no evidence of embezzlement or theft in the case. “How can you steal a loan? Two ways. Do not return or return in the wrong way. In any case, there must be a hole in the bank’s balance sheet. However, all bank statements indicate that the loan was not just stolen, but that it was returned, ”the defender said.
He noted that the Central Bank could not “not notice” the loss of 2.5 billion rubles. “A bank is a complex financial mechanism that is built into the country’s system. This is a bank that had more than ten thousand depositors. If the bank is not returned 2.5 billion rubles, this is an emergency,” Gridnev said. According to him, the case was initiated “for no reason at all.”
At the same time, all the money was not simply returned to Vostochny in the form of shares, but the bank entered into an additional compensation agreement with the First Collection Bureau, as a result of which it received another 2.5 billion rubles. “I don’t know who the victim is, certainly not the bank,” the defender was convinced.
“We cannot initiate a case for the theft of the Gioconda if it hangs in the Louvre in the place where it hung,” he summed up his speech.
Gridnev urged the court to cancel the verdict and acquit his client and other defendants. But if the court does not agree to this, reduce Calvey’s sentence to two years of probation – a term that he has practically served. At the same time, the defender asked the court to take into account the fact that in the two years since the verdict was passed, his client had not committed anything criminal. He also asked to take into account the state of health of Michael Calvey, who, as is known, underwent surgery during the investigation in connection with an oncological disease found in him.
“If it is impossible to overturn the sentence, we ask for a reduction of the suspended and probation period to two years,” Gridnev said. A similar request was made to the court by Philippe Delpal’s lawyer Dmitry Kharitonov. His second lawyer, Alexander Mikhailov, insisted that Delpal was not involved in the issuance of the loan and “his appearance in the case is an absurd mistake, a coincidence.”
Representatives of Sovcombank PJSC, the successor of Vostochny Bank, which was recognized as a victim in the case, although they considered the sentence legal, did not object to the mitigation of the defendants’ terms.
“It has been proven without any doubt that the value of the shares transferred to the bank under the compensation agreement actually turned out to be ten times lower than what was indicated in the transaction act,” said lawyer Kirill Khlynovsky, representing the interests of the bank.
In turn, the prosecutor Dmitry Nadysev opposed the mitigation of punishment for the defendants. He called the verdict lawful and justified. According to the public prosecutor, the investigation and the court managed to consider and establish a fairly extensive scheme of theft, which “was disguised as legitimate banking operations.” He stressed that in similar cases with such a significant amount of damage, the defendants are usually in custody. Therefore, the court “was very lenient” towards Calvey and others, giving them suspended sentences, Nadysev said.
The prosecutor noted that, having received them, both Michael Calvey and Phillip Delpal left the territory of the Russian Federation. (This happened only at the beginning of 2022, when the court of cassation canceled the preventive measure in the form of a ban on certain actions for the defendants. After that, entrepreneurs did not have any bans and obstacles to free movement both within Russia and abroad. – BFM.)
“Thus, they violated the conditions for serving their sentences by leaving the Russian Federation,” the prosecutor said. He asked to leave the verdict unchanged, and the complaint of the defense – without satisfaction.
After weighing the arguments of the parties, the trio of judges made a compromise decision. She reduced the sentences for the convicts, but not in the way the defense requested. So, Michael Calvey and six other defendants were reduced for a year or six months. The court reduced the sentence of Michael Calvey from 5.5 to 4.5 years of probation, Phillip Delpal and Vahan Abgaryan – from 4.5 to 3.5 years of probation. Maxim Vladimirov, Alexander Tsakunov sentences were reduced by six months – from four years to 3.5 years of suspended imprisonment for each.
The judges reduced by six months – from 3.5 years to three years of probation – the term for Alexei Kordichev, who did not appeal the verdict. All were placed on probation for four years. Lawyers left the court without comment.
On August 6, 2021, the Meshchansky Court of Moscow recognized the founder of the Baring Vostok investment fund, Michael Calvey, the partners of the fund, Philippe Delpal and Vagan Abgaryan, the investment director of Baring Vostok, Ivan Zyuzin, the former CEO of the First Collection Bureau (PKB), Maxim Vladimirov, and the ex-director of the bank, Alexander Tsakunov and the former chairman of the board of Vostochny Bank Alexei Kordichev guilty of embezzlement on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
And although under this article they were threatened with up to ten real years in prison, the court sentenced them to suspended sentences – from 3.5 to 5.5 years in prison. The largest suspended sentence of 5.5 years was assigned to Michael Calvey. The court set everyone on probation for five years. All the convicts, with the exception of Kordichev, appealed against the verdict.
The case concerned the issuance in 2015 of two obviously bad and unsecured, according to the investigation, loans totaling 2.5 billion rubles by Vostochny Bank to the First Collection Bureau. Subsequently, instead of repaying the debt, Vostochny received 59.9% of the shares of the Luxembourg company Internationl Financial Technology (IFTG). According to the RF IC, their real value did not exceed 600 thousand rubles. The defendants denied guilt, referring to the data of an independent examination, which valued the securities at almost 4 billion rubles.
During the investigation, the defendants were initially in a pre-trial detention center, then they were transferred under house arrest, and later the Supreme Court softened their preventive measure to the prohibition of certain actions. It was canceled only many months after the verdict was passed: in January-February 2022.
Michael Calvey argued from the very beginning that the criminal case was the result of a corporate dispute with one of the shareholders of Vostochny Bank.
Baring Vostok is a large investment company that has been investing in Russia and other CIS countries since 1994. Thus, over the years the company has invested in VimpelCom and other major projects, including STS Media, Avito, Tinkoff Bank, VkusVill, Papa Johns, the A5 pharmacy chain, Yandex ”, European Medical Center, Ozon.
