August Meyer, co-owner of cosmetics chain Rive Gauche and former co-owner of now defunct online retail Ulmart — was arrested Wednesday last week in St. Petersburg.
Meyer and his wife, Inna Meyer, are suspected of embezzling 2.4 billion rubles ($32.6 million at the current exchange rate) from state-owned bank Sberbank on the pretext of developing Ulmart shortly before the latter’s collapse last year. If found guilty, the two could face up to 10 years in prison.
Meyer was remanded in custody, while his wife was put under house arrest. They both claim their innocence.
Born in San Diego, Meyer moved to Russia more than 20 years ago. He received Russian citizenship in 2015 and renounced his US passport. “America is sinking like the Titanic, but Russia has a future,” Meyer said in a media interview in 2010.
On several occasions, Meyer has publicly talked up Russia’s business climate and praised the authorities. “The perception of Putin in the West does not seem to me fair. He’s not some madman who wants to rebuild the Soviet empire,” Meyer said in 2017.
He now speaks in court in another tone: “What’s this, the Soviet Union in 1931?” Meyer asked following his arrest as he tearfully told of investigators’ attempts to hold his wife hostage. According to Meyer, the investigator promised to release his wife if he confessed.
The Meyers are not the first people to be accused of embezzling funds in the Sberbank-Ulmart case. Back in 2017, Dmitry Kostygin – Ulmart’s main shareholder, company chairman and once a friend of Meyer – was arrested on fraud accusations. He was placed under house arrest in 2017, before being bailed for 25 million rubles ($340,500).
Staring from 2016 Meyer, Kostygin and Mikhail Vasinkevich, a Ulmart investor, were also involved in an inextricable shareholder dispute.
Several other prominent figures involved in Russian technology sectors were arrested over the past few years. These include US private equity investor Michael Calvey and his executive team, RVC head Alexander Povalko, former minister and investor Mikhail Abyzov and, very recently, top Russian cybersecurity executive Ilya Sachkov.
This story is an adapted version of an article from TheBell’s newsletter
