SAMARA, September 24 - RAPSI. The Samara Region government has filed a claim with the High Court of Justice in London to recover $31.7 million from Boris Berezovsky, the amount awarded to the region by an earlier Moscow court decision, the regional government spokesperson reported Monday.

Investigators maintain that Berezovsky used his LogoVAZ car dealership in 1994 to defraud the state-controlled AvtoVAZ car plant in Samara Region of several thousand cars, valued at that time at 58 million rubles.

The regional government was declared the victim.

The amount was later indexed and when the interest accrued, it eventually exceeded one billion rubles.

In April, the Simonovsky District Court of Moscow ordered the fugitive Russian and his business partner, Yuly Dubov, to pay the amount in a ruling over a lawsuit filed by the Samara Region government.

"The court upheld the region's claims against Berezovsky and Dubov, which totaled 1.063 billion rubles ($34.1 million). The levied execution has brought the claimant 74 million rubles ($2.4 million), so the remaining amount payable is 989 million rubles ($31.7 million)," the government spokesperson reports.

Berezovsky has shrugged off the latest court decision, saying that it was unlikely to be enforced.

In September 2009 the court sentenced Berezovsky, who now resides in the UK, to 13 years in jail in absentia for embezzling 58 million rubles ($1.9 million) from LogoVAZ funds. Dubov was given a nine-year prison term.

The Russian authorities have made several requests for Berezovsky's extradition. The UK has rejected the requests.