Orient Express Bank owner asks to keep Calvey in detention

MOSCOW, Feb 28 (PRIME) -- Michael Calvey, a founder of Baring Vostok fund and a shareholder in Orient-Express Bank should stay in detention pending trial, representatives of Orient-Express Bank’s shareholder Sherzod Yusupov demanded on Thursday.

“Statements that Calvey’s actions were entrepreneurship are not (true)… He committed a fraud, so we cannot see any of his activities as entrepreneurship,” a lawyer for Yusupov said, adding that she asks to “uphold the decision of the first instance.”

The Basmanny District Court of Moscow earlier arrested Calvey and five other defendants for two months in a 2.5 billion ruble embezzlement case. The Moscow City Court is checking the legitimacy of Calvey’s arrest on Thursday.

Investigators believe that Calvey, his French partner Philippe Delpal, and several other unidentified managers convinced shareholders of Orient Express Bank to vote for a compensation agreement to receive a 59.9% stake in International Financial Technology Group instead of money. The shares were valued at 3 billion rubles under the deal, while their real value amounted to 600,000 rubles.

Besides Calvey and Delpal, the court arrested Ivan Zyuzin, director for investment at Baring Vostok, Vagan Abgaryan, partner of Baring Vostok focusing on media, real estate, and construction materials projects, Maxim Vladimirov, CEO of First Collection Bureau, and Alexei Kordichev, chairman of the board of directors of Vyatka-Bank, now known as Norvik Bank, and former CEO of Orient Express Bank.

The managers can be put in jail for 10 years. Most of them pleaded not guilty.

Calvey said that the case is a result of his conflict with another Orient-Express Bank shareholder, Artyom Avetisyan.

(65.7570 rubles – U.S. $1)

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