By Agency Reporter

Thursday, 23 Dec 2010

Moscow: A bank owned by the city of Moscow gave the mayor‘s wife a pile of rubles to help her out of a jam; now Russian law enforcement officials are demanding:”Show us the money.”

Russian law enforcement officials have opened a criminal investigation into a top Russian bank owned by the Moscow city government.

The probe into the Bank of Moscow, which has been majority-owned by the city since 1995, is linked to a 12.76billion-ruble (R2.8-bn) loan the bank issued to a little-known company in 2009.

That company then went on to purchase a plot of land at what investigators believe was an inflated price from Yelena Baturina, the wife of the now-deposed mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov.

Baturina has risen to become Russia‘s richest woman, according to Forbes magazine, on the back of Moscow real-estate contracts awarded to her Inteko construction firm.

But the company has been riddled with debt since the 2009 financial crisis.

The transaction took place on the same day as the Moscow city parliament approved a 15-billion-ruble (R3.3bn) transfer to the Bank of Moscow.

Russia‘s interior ministry is now checking to see whether the funds were transferred to help Baturina settle her debts.

Luzhkov became mayor of Moscow in 1992 and eventually established himself as one of Russia‘s most powerful regional bosses.

But he lost a political tug-of-war with the Kremlin and was fired by President Dmitry Medvedev in September 2010.

Russian media reported in December that Baturina has been negotiating to sell her company but Inteko officials have refused to comment on the reports.

 

Source: Punch