MOSCOW, August 27 (RAPSI) – Investigators had initiated yet another criminal case against ex-Minister for Open Government affairs Mikhail Abyzov, who stands charged with a 4-billion-ruble ($62 million) embezzlement, the defendant’s lawyer Alexander Asnis told RAPSI on Tuesday.

According to the lawyer, on Monday a court gave Abyzov a notice of a new criminal case opened against him. No charges have been pressed as yet, Asnis says.

Investigators believe that in 2018 Abyzov was engaged in business activities personally and via intermediaries; the new case is not related to the one, in the framework of which the ex-Minister was detained by the Moscow Basmanny District Court in March.

Investigators insist that between April 2011 and November 2014, Abyzov, the owner of several offshore companies, organized and headed a criminal group. The defendant along with his accomplices allegedly embezzled 4 billion rubles from Novosibirsk Region’s Siberian Energy Company and Regional Electrical Services generation and transmission corporations and transferred the money abroad.

The first criminal case was opened against Abyzov on March 25. The former minister was arrested the next day. On April 3, Moscow’s court placed him in detention. Also, on March 26, the court granted investigators’ motions to detain other alleged members of the criminal group including president of the Novosibirsk Regional Sambo Federation Nikolay Stepanov, board chairman of the First Construction Fund Alexander Pelipasov, deputy CEO of Ru-Com company Maxim Rusakov and finance director of REMIS firm Galina Fraidenberg. Ilichev, who had absconded investigators, was arrested later.

Earlier, the former official’s detention was extended until October 25.

The former minister pleads not guilty and calls his case “a global absurd”.