Car dealer jailed over $40 million fraud

The development director of one of Russia’s largest car dealerships – Rolf – has been found guilty of illegally siphoning billions of rubles out of the country and sentenced on Friday to eight years behind bars as well as a 500,000 ruble fine ($5,182).

Moscow’s Cheryomushkinsky Court found that Anatoly Kairo violated Russia’s criminal code pertaining to the transfer of funds on an especially large scale to accounts of non-residents using false documentation, TASS has reported.

According to investigators, in 2014 Kairo participated in a criminal scheme which saw the transfer of 4 billion rubles, or over $40 million, to an offshore account in Cyprus. The transaction was made under the guise of buying company shares but prosecutors have questioned the legitimacy of the operation and have insisted that the company from which the shares were purchased belonged to Kairo himself.

Kairo was initially placed under house arrest in 2019 when Russia’s Investigative Committee initiated a criminal case against the founder of the Rolf car dealership, Sergey Petrov, as well as several company executives, including the former general director Tatyana Lukevstkaya and the director of the Cypriot company Panabel Limited, Georgy Kafkalia. All were ordered arrested by the court and have been placed on Russia’s wanted list.

Petrov, who resides outside Russia, has repeatedly denied the accusations, telling Interfax that there was never any withdrawal of money from the company. His lawyers have argued that the transaction, which investigators have used as the basis for the criminal case, was a standard procedure for restructuring and consolidating assets.

Kairo was taken into custody in the courtroom following the court’s verdict. His lawyer Anton Gusev told Vedomosti that the defense intends to appeal the verdict.