Intl arrest warrant may be issued for Magomed Bilalov - newspaper
MOSCOW. July 5 (Interfax) - The status of Magomed Bilalov, brother of former North Caucasus Resorts head and Russian Olympic Committee Vice-President Akhmed Bilalov, in the 45.5 million ruble loan fraud case may change from a suspect to a defendant shortly, Izvestia said on Friday.
"The M. Bilalov position in this criminal case has become clear and the police have sufficient grounds to bring the accusations and appeal to court for ordering his arrest in absentia and, as a result, issuing an international arrest warrant," a high-ranking source told the newspaper.
"This will be done soon," he added.
The Interior Ministry said that Magomed Bilalov left Russia immediately after the opening of an abuse of office case against his brother Akhmed, Izvestia said.
"It is hard to say where he may be staying. He has plenty of real estate abroad, homes in the UK, France and Switzerland," politician Oleg Mitvol told the newspaper.
The police are seizing documents and conducting searches to prepare for the indictment of Magomed Bilalov, he said.
Mitvol said the police might charge Bilalov with the misuse of funds allotted not only for Sochi projects (the Mountain Carousel resort and ski jump hills) but also for the Bolshoi Theater reconstruction.
"Bilalov bore relation to the process, in which large sums of budget money got missing," he said.
The police paid attention to M. Bilalov in April after a probe into 45.5 million ruble loan frauds started by request of the Sberbank Krasnodar office, Izvestia said.
Instead of spending the money on construction works, Krasnaya Polyana General Director Stanislav Khatskevich and Financial Director Yelena Raiterer deposited the money in M. Bilalov's National Bank of Business Development at an annual interest rate of 4-7% and took it back from companies affiliated to M. Bilalov as loans at an annual rate of 12.5%.
Krasnaya Polyana executives misappropriated 45.5 million rubles from May 2011 through September 2012 from the rates' difference, the investigators said.