Moscow - Businessman Sergei Polonsky, who faces fraud charges in Russia, has been declared internationally wanted.
“Sergei Polonsky has been placed on the international wanted list,” Moscow Tverskoi Court Judge Alexei Krivoruchko said on Tuesday when considering a petition that demands Polonsky’s arrest in absentia.
An appropriate document has already been added to the case files, the judge said.
Interior Ministry investigator Oleg Silchenko, for his part, said that law enforcement agencies in other countries were also looking into Polonsky’s activities.
“We have received letters from Interpol. Switzerland is conducting a money laundering inquiry against Polonsky,” Silchenko said, asking the court to issue an arrest warrant for the businessman in absentia.
The state prosecutor supported the arguments presented by the investigator, calling them “legitimate and well-founded.”
Polonsky’s defense lawyer Diana Tatosova, for her part, asked the court to postpone its session because her client had a citizenship interview appointment with the Israeli Interior Ministry for Tuesday.
“His attendance [at the interview with the Israeli Interior Ministry] is obligatory. He will not be able to be present here [at the Russian court] today,” Tatosova said.
The court declined the lawyer’s petition and agreed to issue an arrest warrant for Polonsky in absentia.
Under the law, Polonsky will be taken into custody if he returns to Russia.
The press service of the Russian Interior Ministry’s Investigative Department said earlier that investigators sought Polonsky’s arrest in absentia as part of a continuing fraud inquiry opened against him.
The Interpol National Central Bureau of the Russian Interior Ministry has received information from the Israeli law enforcement authorities that Polonsky was living in Israel, which he entered on a tourist visa expiring on September 27, 2013.
A criminal inquiry on counts of large-scale fraud was opened in Russia in the autumn of 2012 against unidentified employees of the Mirax Group company founded by Polonsky.
Investigators believe that “in 2007-2008 they began concluding preliminary sale/purchase agreements for apartments in the Kutuzovskaya Milya residential complex under construction, which they knew were not in line with the project’s approved documents.
