Billionaire Sergei Pugachev, a former Kremlin insider who fled Russia after falling foul of the authorities, on Saturday lost an appeal against a Moscow court ruling ordering him to pay about US$1 billion over his role in the collapse of his bank.
Set up by Pugachev in 1992, the International Industrial Bank (known as Mezhprombank in Russian) in November 2010 was declared bankrupt by the Moscow arbitration court, which said it had failed to report accurate account data and was unable to satisfy its creditor obligations.
Once one of Russia’s richest men who presided over a multi-billion-dollar shipping empire, Pugachev fled to Britain in 2011 after falling out of favor with then-Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin.
The Moscow court last year ordered him to pay 75.6 billion rubles (US$998.37 million at current exchange rates) to the bank’s former clients over his role in the lender’s collapse.
Pugachev immediately appealed to Russia’s Supreme Court to quash the ruling, but he lost the appeal, the court said on Saturday in a statement quoted by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
He stands accused of fraudulent bankruptcy and is wanted by the authorities on charges of fraud and embezzlement. His overseas assets have been frozen and Interpol has issued a warrant for his arrest, but he denies any role in the bank’s collapse.
In September last year, Pugachev took his case to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, demanding US$12 billion from Moscow, which he accused of “stripping” his assets out of vindictiveness.
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