Moscow court orders US investor of Baring Vostok to be held in custody over $37mn fraud allegations

The founder and senior partner of Baring Vostok private equity fund, Michael Calvey, will be detained in Moscow for two months after his bail got rejected. The US citizen is accused of a large-scale fraud involving a Russian bank.

The investor was put in pre-trial custody by a Moscow court on Saturday. The court rejected the request of Calvey’s defense to release him on 5 million rubles ($75.5 thousand) bail. The prosecution, on its part, insisted that the detention was an absolute necessity, as the US citizen might try and flee the country.

Calvey's defense has already vowed to challenge the detention order.

“We do not agree with the court's ruling and we will challenge it at the Moscow city court. We'll request either home arrest or bail,” Calvey's attorney, Dmitry Kletochkin told TASS.

Several other suspects, including partners of the Baring Vostok fund, namely Philippe Delpal, Vagan Abgaryan and Ivan Zyuzin – were ordered to remain in pretrial custody earlier on Friday. All individuals are suspected of taking part in a fraud, which involved Russia's Vostochny Bank.

The investigators believe that Calvey embezzled 2.5 billion rubles ($37.5 million) from Vostochny Bank via a fraudulent scheme. The investor and his associates have allegedly persuaded the bank's board to accept a package of shares of an enterprise instead of paying off a debt. While the shares were said to be worth over 3 billion rubles (some $45 million), their real cost was merely 600,000 rubles ($9,000).

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