MOSCOW, December 7 (RAPSI) – Dublin District Court revoked on Wednesday a freeze on up to 100 million euros belonging to former Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, The Irish Times reports on Wednesday.
The funds managed by a trust services firm were frozen in 2011 by the Irish courts on suspicion of money laundering put forward by the country’s law enforcers.
Judge of the Irish District Court Timothy Lucey said he saw no reasonable grounds to maintain the freezing order.
According to The Irish Times, some other assets of unspecified value managed by the same trust may be released in the light of the decision passed by Judge Lucey.
A representative of Irish law enforcement agency told the court that a probe into the origins of the money in question was ongoing in cooperation with the Russian investigators.
Remy Farrell, a lawyer for Khodorkovsky, said in turn that the money came from Yukos dividend and share buyback payments. He noted that there was no real prospect of prosecution of his client in Ireland.
Meanwhile, yet in December 2015 Vladimir Markin, until this September the official spokesman of Russia’s Investigative Committee, stated that Khodorkovsky had been arrested in absentia by the Moscow Basmanny District Court. Later the Moscow City Court upheld this ruling.
Khodorkovsky, the ex-head of oil giant Yukos granted political asylum in UK, was arrested in absentia and put on the wanted list in connection with the murder of a Russian town mayor Vladimir Petukhov in 1998. The case was reinitiated in 2015 because of the newly discovered evidence.