MOSCOW, June 19 (RAPSI) – Russian Sergei Pugachev, former member of the Russian parliament’s upper house and beneficiary of International Industrial Bank (Mezhprombank), which was declared bankrupt in 2010, will appeal a court decision under which he is to pay 75.6 billion rubles ($2.2 billion) of the bank’s liabilities, his lawyer, Eleonora Sergeyeva, told RAPSI.

“Our rights have been trampled on today,” she said. “Shortly before the hearing, we received a pile of new documents from the other litigants. We asked for time to study them and to review our position, but our request was denied. We’ll continue to fight for our rights, including appealing this court decision.”

Last year, the DIA asked the court to debit a total of 68.481 billion rubles ($2 billion) from Pugachev and Marina Illarionova, the last CEO of Mezhprombank, and 7.161 billion rubles ($209.45 million) from two former chief executives, Alexander Didenko and Alexei Zlobin. The Moscow Commercial Court granted the DIA’s claim.

This was the largest amount ever assigned for secondary liability in Russia.

On June 18, the Ninth Court of Appeals upheld a Moscow Commercial Court decision.

A source familiar with the case told RIA Novosti on June 17 that the pre-hearing of Pugachev’s case would begin at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court “within days.”

The Moscow Commercial Court declared Mezhprombank bankrupt in November 2010 after the bank defaulted on its debts and received a 40-billion-ruble bailout from Russia’s Central Bank. The Deposit Insurance Agency was appointed liquidator of Mezhprombank’s assets.

An investigation into the bankruptcy was launched in January 2011 on suspicion of “illegal operations in the process of bankruptcy filing and deliberate bankruptcy.”

Pugachev was eventually charged with embezzlement and arrested in absentia. In November 2014, he was put on an international wanted list.

In January 2015, Russia sent a request for extradition to the UK.