Bashneft ex-chief inquiry extended until April 28
UFA. Jan 30 (Interfax) - The criminal inquiry into an illegal sale of Bashneft shares, in which the company's ex-chief Ural Rakhimov is a co-defendant, has been extended again, Rakhimov's lawyer Sergei Makarenko said.
"The [inquiry] period has been extended for three months until April 28," Makarenko told Interfax on Monday.
The case was opened in April 2014. Another one, over legalization of criminal proceeds, was opened in August after shares in Bashkortostan energy companies were sold to Sistema JFSC . The defendants are Rakhimov, businessman Levon Airapetyan and Sistema chief Vladimir Yevtushenkov.
Rakhimov was indicted in absentia of "appropriating or misspending and legalizing criminal proceeds." The Basmanny court of Moscow ordered his arrest in absentia. The man is on the international wanted list.
Yevtushenkov was placed under house arrest in September of 2014 and released at the end of that year. Later the criminal charges against him were dropped.
Airapetyan was jailed for four years for stealing over $700,000 from the mother of Bashkortostan ex-senator Igor Izmestyev.
In December of 2014 Rakhimov's lawyer Airat Latypov stated that his client had left Russia five years ago when he was under no criminal investigation and had not returned since, but the investigators know that he is currently in Austria.
Russia asked Austria to extradite Rakhimov but on February 19, 2016, an Austrian court ruled against his extradition.
Sistema bought Bashneft's shares from the funds close to the then governor of the Bashkortostan Republic, Murtaza Rakhimov, and his son U. Rakhimov.
In October of 2014 a Moscow arbitration court ruled held the privatization of Bashneft had been conducted with irregularities and ordered the shares' reclaim from Sistema. In December Sistema handed Bashneft over to the state and in February of 2015 won a court case to recover 70.7 billion rubles from the asset's seller, Ural-Invest, a firm close to U. Rakhimov.
In March the parties reached peace agreement: Ural-Invest paid 46.5 billion rubles to Sistema, of which the latter undertook to invest 4.6 billion rubles in charitable projects of Ural fund (the owner of 100% in Ural-Invest).