MOSCOW, November 3 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko) – TThe Moscow City Court upheld the detention of Dmitry Amunts, former deputy head of the Federal Tourism Agency (Rosturizm), who is suspected of embezzling 29 billion rubles ($457 million) from now-defunct Mezhprombank, RAPSI learnt in the court on Thursday.

Investigators claim that Amunts together with Alexander Didenko, former Mezhprombank executive, and a number of accomplices were members of a criminal group that embezzled the funds from the bank in 2008-2009.

Didenko pleaded guilty and received a 3-year suspended sentence in July 2015. However, in September the Moscow City Court changed Didenko’s suspended sentence to real jail term.

Mezhprombank’s operating license was revoked in October 2010 by the Central Bank over failure to comply with the regulator’s requirements or to satisfy creditors’ claims. In November Mezhprombank was declared bankrupt. At that time, the bank owed 31.8 billion rubles ($501 million) to the Central Bank while the creditors’ claims totaled 85 billion rubles ($1.3 billion).

Sergei  Pugachev, who owned the bank, was arrested in absentia by a Moscow court and put on the international wanted list in December 2013.