U.S. investor Michael Calvey will be kept under house arrest until Feb. 13, facing charges of embezzlement, a Moscow Court has ruled, according to state-run news agency TASS.
An official representative of Calvey’s company, equity group Baring Vostok, described the decision as “unjustified”.
Calvey and other executives at Baring Vostok were arrested in February 2019. They deny wrongdoing and say the charges against them are being used to pressure them in a business dispute over control of Vostochny bank. The nearly year-long saga has triggered unease among Russia’s business and investment community and stoked tensions between Moscow and Washington.
Calvey was placed under house arrest in April, after two months in jail, while Baring Vostok manager Phillipe Delpal was moved from jail to house arrest in August.
Calvеy and Delpal asked to be released on bail of 25 million rubles ($408,000). Calvey cannot interfere with the investigation or influence witnesses since the investigation has already been completed, the businessman’s lawyer Timofey Gridnev said.
According to Delpal’s lawyer, the French executive did not have the time and opportunity to familiarize himself with the new text of the prosecution: because of the interruption in the court’s work on holidays, the accused did not receive a copy of the document in French. Delpal received a translation of the resolution of the investigation on the extension of the house arrest only on January 9, 45 minutes before the court hearing on this issue. He complained about the poor quality of the translation and “whole paragraphs” of untranslated text.
