Yekateriburg court rejects investigator's petition for in-absentia arrest of Chelyabinsk ex-governor Yurevich
YEKATERINBURG. May 12 (Interfax) - The Leninsky district court in Yekaterinburg on Friday considered a petition for in-absentia arrest of a former Chelyabinsk region governor, Mikhail Yurevich, charged with bribe taking and instigating defamation.
The court chose not to arrest Yurevich, an Interfax correspondent reported from the courtroom.
"The court has ruled against the investigator's petition for Yurevich to be put under restraint in the form of placement in custody," the judge said.
Currently there is no objective information as to Yurevich's refusal to return from abroad after treatment, the judge said.
"No data has been provided to the court about Yurevich continuing to engage in criminal activities, and so the court has no reason to believe that he would continue to engage in criminal activities. Nor does the court see any reason to believe that Yurevich may obstruct the process of establishing the truth, since the gathering of evidence in the case is effectively complete," the judge said.
The defense lawyers are fully satisfied with the court's decision, one of them told reporters outside the courthouse.
"In his ruling the judge took the same position that the defense lawyer expressed in the court. We will appeal our client's placement on the federal and international wanted lists, because there was no reason for it. His whereabouts are known, the inquiry will continue, we'll be disproving the presented charge," a defense attorney said.
"Mikhail Yurevich said that he will refrain from making comment regardless of the court's decision," the ex-governor's spokeswoman Yulia Bobyleva told Interfax.
It was reported Yurevich had been charged with taking a bribe in 2012, then governor of the Chelyabinsk region, from Vitaly Teslenko, whom Yurevich appointed as the region's health minister.
According to the inquiry, Yurevich had systematically received bribes from Teslenko, which totaled 26 million rubles.
Furthermore, the former governor has been charged with inciting his first deputy Oleg Grachev to defame the chairman of the Chelyabinsk regional court.
At present Yurevich is abroad. On April 10 he was due to appear for questioning but could not fly to Yekaterinburg for health reasons, his lawyer said.
On May 5 Yurevich was placed on the international wanted list.
The ex-governor's lawyer Igor Trunov said that his legal team had provided the investigators with documentation from a London medical institution, whereby Yurevich cannot be placed under arrest due to illness.
