MOSCOW, July 16 (RAPSI) — The Moscow Commercial Court has dismissed a a request filed by PJSC T Plus to freeze up to 34 billion rubles ($455 million) of assets belonging to former government minister Mikhail Abyzov.

PJSC T Plus says that Abyzov is taking measures aimed at reducing the volume of his assets.

Nevertheless, the court said the company had not presented evidence that the failure to take interim measures could complicate or make impossible the execution of the order issued following the consideration of the petition for bringing Abyzov to subsidiary liability. 

The petition was filed as a part of the lawsuit loged by several companies seeking to bring Abyzov and two managers of the company to subsidiary liability for the obligations of engineering company E4 Group, and to recover from them more than 34 billion rubles. 

In 2016, the Moscow Commercial Court declared E4 Group bankrupt.

The applicants in the case are bankruptcy trustee of E4 Group Igor Vyshegorodtsev, SUPTR-10 LLC, T Plus PJSC, Redeliaco Holdings LTD and Alfa-Bank, the respondents are Abyzov, Andrey Malyshev and Ekaterina Sirotenko.

This May, the Moscow City Court ruled in favor of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, which sought that over 32.5 billion rubles ($435 million at the current exchange rate) worth of funds owned by Mikhail Abyzov were forfeited to the State.

In October 2020, the Moscow Gagarinsky District Court ruled to forfeit to the State 32.5 billion rubles jointly and severally from Abyzov and a number of companies.

In mid-August last year, the Russian Investigative Committee of Russia completed its investigation of the ex-minister and other defendants. 

According to investigators, Abyzov, being the beneficial owner of a number of offshore commercial organizations, created and headed a criminal community: acting in complicity with other persons, he fraudulently stole funds in the amount of 4 billion rubles ($54 million) from Sibirskaya Energeticheskaya Kompaniya and Regionalnye Elektricheskiye Seti. Later, the embezzled funds were moved overseas.

"The fact of the legalization of funds by Abyzov and other defendants was established thanks to effective interaction with Russian finance watchdog Rosfinmonitoring and with the assistance of the competent authorities of the Republic of Cyprus, as the Investigative Committee had informed earlier.