Michael Calvey's conviction cancelled as his probation period expires - lawyer
MOSCOW. May 20 (Interfax) - Baring Vostok investment company founder, U.S. citizen Michael Calvey, earlier handed a suspended sentence in Russia for defrauding 2.5 billion rubles from the Vostochny Bank, is no longer considered a convicted person since his probation period has expired, his lawyer Timofei Gridnev told Interfax.
"Michael Calvey's conviction is considered to be cancelled from the first day of April following his probation period's expiration," Gridnev said.
Currently, Calvey is outside of Russia, he said.
On August 6, 2021, Moscow's Meshchansky District Court pronounced a suspended sentence of five years and six months on Calvey on embezzlement charges, and the Moscow City Court commuted the suspended sentence to four years and a half with a four-year probation period in 2022. A cassation court also commuted the sentence in 2024.
Calvey did not plead guilty during the investigation and trial. The cassation court said that Calvey pled guilty, when his appeal was considered in 2024, but his lawyer said that was not true.
It was reported earlier that Calvey left Russia.
Six more people got suspended sentences apart from Calvey. They were also found guilty of a large-scale embezzlement.
According to the case materials, Calvey and other case defendants in the case organized the illegal approval of two obviously non-repayable and unsecured loans in rubles and dollars totaling over 2.5 billion rubles by the Vostochny Bank to the First Client Bureau under their control, allegedly for replenishing working capital. Once the money was transferred to the First Client Bureau, the defendants acquired access to the funds, which were stolen by transfer to the Cyprus-based Balakus company, the investigators said.
The First Client Bureau repaid obligations to the Vostochny Bank through a compensation agreement with the transfer to the bank of 59.9% of the shares of the Luxembourg-based International Financial Technology Group (IFTG) company, the real value of which, according to the prosecution, was 254 million rubles.
As a result, the defendants defrauded the bank of 2.5 billion rubles.
None of defendants pled guilty at the lower-tier court.
Calvey said that the First Client Bureau used the loans at the bank's request to repay Vostochny's off-balance sheet obligations to the Cyprus-based BrokerCreditService company for 2.5 billion rubles, secured by Eurobonds for 5 billion rubles.
Calvey also said that the value of the package of disputed IFTG shares, handed over to the bank under the compensation agreement, was much larger that the First Client Bureau's loan obligations, according to various estimates.
In late 2020, the First Client Bureau and the Vostochny Bank said they came to an agreement by which the bank received 2.5 billion rubles, the amount of damages imputed to Calvey and his colleagues, and dropped the civil claim filed against the defendants in the criminal case.
