Ombudsman to ask Putin to allow businessmen to return from London

MOSCOW, Dec 6 (PRIME) -- Business ombudsman Boris Titov is preparing a list of Russian businessmen that are hiding in London from prosecution, and plans to ask President Vladimir Putin to allow them to return and redeem the financial damage they inflicted on the country, Titov told PRIME on Wednesday.

“We’ve created a special public institution of a business ombudsman that was specifically connected to criminal investigation and prosecution. We want to start dialogue with the authorities today,” he said.

He added that he already visited London and spoke with Russian businessmen who are on the Interpol wanted list due to criminal cases launched in Russia.

He said that many of them chose to flee Russia only to avoid being put in a detention center. “We are looking at the list now, we will analyze these requests, and we will ask the president to solve the issue of some specific surnames,” he said.

“We also (plan) to ask to exclude them from the Interpol wanted list, to allow them to return to the country, and to make a separate decision on each individual case. Some of these entrepreneurs may have violated the law, and we should find a solution how they should redeem the financial damage they’ve inflicted on the country. But we have serious doubt that many of them actually violated anything after we looked into their cases.”

Among the businessmen hiding in London from Russian prosecution are Yevgeny Chichvarkin – former owner of handheld retailer Euroset charged with abduction of expeditor Andrei Vlaskin -- and Andrei Borodin, a billionaire and former head of the Bank of Moscow charged with a large-scale fraud.

The list may also include Andrei Chernyakov – former head of Scientific-Production Association Kosmos charged with fraud while receiving a 12 billion ruble loan from the Bank of Moscow, and former Senator Sergei Pugachyov, beneficiary of defunct Mezhprombank charged with illegal withdrawal of money from the bank that inflicted more than 90 billion rubles of financial damage on the Deposit Insurance Agency.

(58.6924 rubles – U.S. $1)

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