MOSCOW, May 5 (RAPSI) - The Commercial Court of the Northwestern District of St. Petersburg has ruled in favor of a cassation appeal by the former chairman of Inkasbank, Alexander Gitelson, and has overturned a ruling that imposed a subsidiary liability on him for the bank’s 5 billion ruble ($97 mln) debt, RAPSI learnt in the court on Tuesday.

In related rulings, the court overturned the collection of 5.97 billion rubles ($115 mln) from another ex-board chairperson, Tatyana Lebedeva, and 282 million rubles ($5.4 mln) from her deputy Lyudmila Samorukova. The case was sent back for review by the lower instance court.

In July 2014, the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region Commercial Court, upon request of the Deposit Insurance Agency, the bankrupt bank’s insolvency administrator, charged Gitelson and two other former top managers of Inkasbank with subsidiary liability. In December 2014, the court of appeals upheld the ruling. The ex-bank managers appealed the rulings in a court of cassation.

On May 21, 2009, the court declared Inkasbank  bankrupt. The bank’s administrator conducted an inquiry into the circumstances of the bank’s insolvency. As a result, the Russian Federal Security Service received a motion to open a criminal case (premeditated bankruptcy) against the bank’s former management.

Gitelson and former CEO of Inkasbank Tatyana Lebedeva were charged with embezzling almost 2 billion rubles (about $33 million) that authorities of St. Petersburg deposited with Inkasbank from May 2006 to May 2007.

He was arrested in Austria in April 2013 and extradited to Russia in December.

In March 2015, a court in St. Petersburg sentenced Gitelson to 3 years in prison and fined him one million rubles ($19,600).