MOSCOW, April 11 The Investigative Committee has opened a case due to the misappropriation of assets of a Russian bank by Kiev, said the official representative of the Prosecutor General's Office Andrey Ivanov.
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“A decision was made to initiate a criminal case under Part 4 of Article 159 (“Fraud”) and Part 2 of Article 169 of the Criminal Code of Russia (“Obstruction of Lawful Business Activities”). The investigation is under the control of the Prosecutor General's Office,» he specified.
Ukrainian officials have long restricted the activities of the credit institution and its subsidiary in order to harm the interests of Russia, the bank itself and its clients.
The bank sought to sell assets in order to provide Ukrainian clients with the opportunity to receive financial services without regard to the political preferences of Kiev, but the country's authorities blocked all these attempts, the representative of the department specified.
«The apotheosis of this disregard for the interests of one's own citizens <…> was the expropriation of the assets of a credit institution, which effectively ensured the transfer of all the property of a subsidiary of a Russian bank into the hands of a Ukrainian oligarchy,» Ivanov explained.
< br />The Prosecutor General's Office estimated the damage to the Russian bank and its clients at more than a billion dollars.
The name of the affected credit institution has not been officially disclosed. The source clarified that this is a «daughter» of Sberbank.