The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has seized documents in the Morye sanatorium owned by the Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev in the Crimean resort of Alushta.
The seizure took place on Nov. 4 as part of a criminal probe into the Alushta City Hall’s decision to reduce the city’s budget revenue by about 5 million hryvnas, under Article 211 of Ukraine’s Penal Code (the issuance of orders changing budget revenue and expenditure in violation of the law).
"The SBU has no complaints about the sanatorium itself. The case in point is abuse of authority by the City Hall," an SBU spokesman has told Interfax.
Simultaneously, Ukrainian tax police performed on-site checks on several other facilities.
Earlier, British media, including the Guardian and the Financial Times, reported that Lebedev, who owns the Independent and the Evening Standard newspapers in the UK, had problems with his Ukrainian business: on Nov. 4 and 5, police searched his recreational facilities, while Lebedev himself was staying at the More sanatorium at the time.
Lebedev sees such actions on the part of the SBU and the tax service as a form of political pressure by the new Ukrainian government, Lebedev’s press secretary Artyom Artyomov said, British media report.
Lebedev denied any link between the above incidents and the Nov. 3 police search in the Moscow office of his National Reserve Bank.
In 2009, the Morye hotel increased its net sales income by 4.7% to 48.39 million hryvnas, while its net profit decreased 7.8 times to 0.322 million hryvnas.
