A Moscow court ruled yesterday that Michael Calvey, the prominent US investor arrested in February, and his French colleague Philippe Delpal, should remain under house arrest until January 13.
According to the Investigative Committee, which requested such measure, three more months are required to complete the investigation, as reported by the TASS news agency.
Initially put in pre-trial detention, Calvey and Delpal were later moved to house arrest.
Baring Vostok, the private equity firm founded by Calvey, believes the court’s decision is “unfounded:”
The court is acting at the behest of the investigator, who is intentionally dragging out the case in order to put pressure on our colleagues, while completely ignoring the defence’s arguments. The criminal case, which was initiated to exert pressure as part of a commercial dispute, is completely illegitimate. This is clear from the court’s own decision to completely ignore a court-ordered valuation of IFTG that put the fundamental value of the shares in question.
Baring Vostok is referring to the fact that the value of shares of a bank, which is central to the case, was re-appraised just weeks ago. These shares were handed over by Baring Vostok to Vostochny Bank as part of a loan repayment; and their value was, in reality, many times higher than the amount alleged by the plaintiff in the case.
Should this valuation be confirmed, the charges against Baring Vostok executives would fall apart.
Thus, “numerous indications that the arrests of innocent people is being used to gain control of the bank and to conceal the real asset stripping have been ignored” by the court, insists Baring Vostok.
Crime and punishment
The firm still believes, however, that the innocence of Calvey, Delpal and their Russian colleagues “will ultimately be established,” and that “the raiders [those attempting to gain control of the bank through the illegitimate legal procedure] will receive the punishment they deserve.”
Meanwhile, as reported earlier this week by the Financial Times, Michael Calvey has had more than 55 million rubles ($850,000) in assets frozen. A request from prosecutors to seize local bank accounts, cars and apartments owned by Calvey and four of his Baring Vostok colleagues was approved by a Moscow court in August, with their families informed of the development last week.
One of the most established Russian private equity firms, Baring Vostok invested in some of Russia’s best tech companies. The Calvey affair has been one of the heaviest blows to Russia’s perceived business image, following the Khodorkovsky case in the early 2000s, the Magnitsky case in the early 2010s, and the exacerbation of international tensions after the events in Crimea in 2014.
