Cambodia yesterday deported an on-the-run Russian tycoon accused of embezzling tens of millions of US dollars in a real-estate scam, officials said. Sergei Polonsky, who is in his 40s, was detained on Friday on an island off Cambodia’s southwestern town of Sihanoukville for overstaying his visa.
“He was deported on Sunday morning back to his country,” said Uk Heisela, chief of the investigations unit at the Cambodian Ministry of the Interior’s immigration department.
“He is a naughty man,” he said, adding that Russian officials were escorting him back to his nation.
Photo: EPA
Polonsky had lived illegally in Cambodia by overstaying his visa for more than two years and his activities “affect Cambodian national security,” Heisela said.
Eight other Russians have been arrested and also face deportation, he added. In August 2013, a Russian court ordered Polonsky’s detention after he was charged in absentia for his alleged role in a 5.7 billion ruble (US$174 million) swindle, which defrauded more than 80 investors.
Investigators have accused the businessman of orchestrating the scam linked to the construction of a housing complex in 2007-2008.
Polonsky was in November, 2013, detained in Cambodia after a request by Russia, but freed by an appeals court in January last year.
Cambodia’s Supreme Court in April last year rejected the request by Russia to extradite Polonsky, ruling that the tycoon could not be sent back home because the two nations do not have an extradition treaty.
Polonsky, who denies the accusations, last year said at a news conference in Phnom Penh that it was a “big case” involving “a lot of bad men.”
Polonsky still faces a separate trial in Cambodia over allegations that he and two other Russians threatened a boat crew in the kingdom at knifepoint.
He was in April, 2013, granted provisional release in that case after spending three months in prison in Cambodia, where he has business interests.
The outspoken tycoon’s business was hit hard by the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, forcing him to abandon work on Moscow’s Federation Tower, which he had hoped would become Europe’s tallest building.
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