MOSCOW, September 17 (RAPSI) – The Tagansky District Court of Moscow on Thursday found a former president of Globex Bank Vitaly Vavilin guilty of embezzling 12 million euros from the financial organization and sentenced him to 3 years in penal colony, the court’s spokesperson Zulfia Gurinchuk has told RAPSI.

A prosecutor earlier asked the court to pass an 8.5-year jail sentence upon Vavilin and a 1 million-ruble ($13,300) fine.

Investigators believe that in 2015 Vavilin used his job position to give an unrecoverable 12-million euros loan to a company controlled by businessmen, brothers Alexey and Dmitry Ananyev. The credit deal terms have been allegedly changed and debt obligations to Globex have been transferred to a foreign organization, which is yet to return the money.

Vavilin pleads not guilty and denies his involvement in granting the loan.

In February, the Moscow City Court ordered the defendant to be released from detention and put under house arrest.

The Moscow business ombudsman Tatiana Mineyeva has noted that the businessman’s rights were violated in the framework of the case: firstly, he was detained, and, secondly, his actions could not be qualified as embezzlement, because a commercial court found that the bank suffered no damages.

Established in 1992, Globex Bank is one of major Russian banks with most of its shares (99.9 percent) owned by the state-run Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs.