MOSCOW, October 26 - RAPSI, Alyona Yegorova. The court postponed on Wednesday until November 16 the preliminary hearing of a $2.8 million lawsuit filed by one of Russia's richest businesswoman Yelena Baturina against a depository company, the Russian Legal Information Agency reports from the courtroom.

Baturina is the head of the Inteco development company and the wife of former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

The defendants in the case are Depository Irkol, Irkol, and the Alliance Continental management company and its general director Alexei Chalenko, who earlier worked as Baturina's assistant in Inteco. The Federal Service for Financial Markets is a third party in the case.

According to Baturina's lawyer, she owned 100 percent of the shares in an investment fund managed by Alliance Continental. When she requested the sale of the shares, the company did not begin the winding-up as prescribed by law, which inflicted losses on Baturina.

Specifically, the company withheld 29.269 million rubles ($960,000) as cost recovery, which does not apply when 100 percent of a company's shares are sold.

In addition, the company continued to receive payment for its activities and deducted 14.5 million rubles ($475,500) from the fund's assets, which Batirina thinks was unlawful as the amount constituted an allowance for future expenses.