The Prosecutor General’s Office approved the indictment in the case of the collapse of Vneshprombank

The high-profile criminal case about the collapse of Vneshprombank, a Russian credit institution that was among the country’s top 40 banks in terms of assets, has reached a new stage, Kommersant reports. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has finally approved the indictment against Georgy Bedzhamov, a former bank beneficiary who is currently hiding in the UK.

Bedzhamov is accused of embezzling 156 billion rubles, which were transferred to the accounts of shell companies, leaving bank depositors without their funds. He will be tried in absentia, since the Russian authorities were unable to obtain the extradition of the fugitive banker from abroad.

Meanwhile, the trial of Bedzhamov’s closest associates is ending in Moscow.

Let us recall that the criminal case about the theft of funds from Vneshprombank was launched by the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs just a month before the Central Bank of the Russian Federation revoked the license of this credit organization. In March 2016, the bank declared bankruptcy, leaving many depositors and investors without funds. The bank’s debts exceeded 200 billion rubles.

Top managers of the bank, including Georgy Bedzhamov, Larisa Marcus and Ekaterina Glushakova, were brought to subsidiary liability. The amount of the claim from the Deposit Insurance Agency was about 217 billion rubles.

Moreover, as part of this case, a security arrest was imposed on 574 land plots in the Moscow region and the Ryazan region, as well as on apartments and houses.

It should be noted that Georgy Bedzhamov evaded extradition from both Monaco and the UK, where local authorities refused to comply with requests for his transfer. However, he did not avoid losing a number of lawsuits related to damages. In 2019, the High Court of London even seized Bedzhamov’s assets worth up to 1.34 billion pounds sterling, which at that time amounted to about 95.5 billion rubles.