Prosecutor General’s Office Demands Extradition of Ex-Director of Antipinsky Oil Refinery
Recently, the first court session on the extradition case of Gennady Lisovichenko, the former general director of JSC Antipinsky Oil Refinery (NPZ), was held in Italy. At home, he is being investigated for abuse of power, fraud and embezzlement. Lawyers, who believe that the claims against the businessman are purely civil in nature, cannot yet get to the client and communicate with him via video conference: due to the anti-COVID measures taken in Italy, the detainee is being transported from one prison to another.
Gennady Lisovichenko has been wanted by Interpol since November 2019, and he was detained in Italy on January 20 this year. “Currently, the supervisory agency is preparing a request for the extradition of Gennady Lisovichenko in order to bring him to criminal responsibility,” said Andrey Ivanov, a representative of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office.
A criminal case against Gennady Lisovichenko was initiated by the investigative department of the TFR in the Tyumen region in the summer of 2019. In August, he was charged in absentia and put on the international wanted list. The court also arrested the businessman in absentia, after which the materials against Mr. Lisovichenko were sent to Interpol to place his data in the search base of the international police organization. According to investigators, being the general director of the Antipinsky Oil Refinery (he headed the enterprise from 2004 to November 2018), he entered into a deliberately unprofitable contract for the sale of the company’s property. It was about the railway track, which, according to the materials of the case, was “an important object for the plant, since oil products were loaded along it.”
At the same time, according to the investigation, the contract indicated a lower price compared to the market price. The damage caused to the refinery is estimated at 35 million rubles.
However, the criminal prosecution of Mr. Lisovichenko was not limited to this. In the same 2019, as the editors said, the investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (large-scale fraud) in relation to Dmitry Mazurov, the founder of the Novy Potok group of companies, which previously owned the Antipinsky Oil Refinery. It was about the alleged embezzlement of 1.8 billion rubles. credit funds of Sberbank. Moreover, the bank’s claims concerned not only Mr. Mazurov, who was then taken under arrest, but also Gennady Lisovichenko. In the final version of the indictment, Dmitry Mazurov was charged with misappropriation of $29 million of Sberbank funds, embezzlement of 473 million rubles belonging to the Antipinsky Oil Refinery, as well as organizing an attack, as a result of which serious harm was caused to the health of escort Yulia Milshtein (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, part 4 article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and paragraph “a” part 3 of article 111 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The second episode concerns the withdrawal of the company’s funds under an allegedly fictitious contract. According to the materials of the case, Mr. Mazurov, together with Gennady Lisovichenko, withdrew 473 million rubles to the account of a certain counterparty, while he did not fulfill his obligations to the refinery. The process in the case of Dmitry Mazurov is now taking place in the Simonovsky Court of Moscow. According to the data, it may end in April-May. Meanwhile, in June 2020, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow, at the request of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, arrested Mr. Lisovichenko in absentia as part of this case. The president of the New Stream group, Yuri Navrazhny, was also arrested in absentia.
Mr. Lisovichenko’s lawyer Ruslan Elkanov said that, in his opinion, it is not profitable for the Tyumen department of the TFR and the Ministry of Internal Affairs to combine criminal cases against a businessman into one proceeding: “In the episode in Tyumen, all witnesses are “at hand”, the same situation with episodes which are being investigated by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow”.
Meanwhile, in the Italian city of Bari, the first hearing on the case of Mr. Lisovichenko was held. So far, two of his Italian lawyers have not been able to see the client himself: the ex-general director of the refinery is being transferred from one prison to another due to changing sanitary requirements caused by the pandemic. Communication is still going on via video conferencing. Elkanov refused to talk about the line that the defense would choose, as well as about other details of the extradition case. But it can be assumed that it will be close to the one advocated by the defense of Dmitry Mazurov in the Simonovsky court. According to Ruslan Koblev, representing the interests of a businessman, “based on the version of the investigation, the state prosecution in court challenges the legality and economic feasibility of a number of civil law transactions concluded on behalf of Antipinsky Oil Refinery JSC by General Director Lisovichenko, including obtaining a loan from PJSC Sberbank. The defense considers this position of the prosecution legally absurd. At a time when Mazurov was the majority shareholder of the refinery, the company not only paid interest on loans, but also repaid loans to other creditors on time. The grounds for the bankruptcy of the Antipinsky Oil Refinery were created artificially, and the market value of the plant exceeded the amount of borrowings.
