MOSCOW, January 27 (RAPSI) – The Southwark Crown Court in London has sentenced two City traders Georgy Urumov and Vladimir Gersamia, to 12 and 7 years in prison respectively for defrauding Russian-owned Otkritie Securities Ltd (OSL), Otkritie Bank announced on Friday.

On Thursday, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that Urumov and Gersamia were convicted of multiple fraud offences of complex nature.

Chairman of the bank’s board, Aleksey Karakhan, said that Otkritie Bank is satisfied with the court’s unambiguous position regarding Urumov’s actions.

In February 2014, London’s High Court ruled that Otkritie is a victim of a complex fraud scheme, conducted by Urumov and other ex-employees of the bank.

On Thursday, the Southwark Crown Court found out that the first instance of this fraud was carried out in 2011 when Urumov started working for OSL. He convinced the company to pay him around £20 million under the false impression that money would be distributed to other people. Later, Urumov and Gersamia were responsible for several further frauds while trading certain financial products.

Gersamia, an employee of investment management company Threadneedle Asset Management, helped Urumov with covering tracks and laundering illegal gains. Two men could accumulate around £121million from their criminal activity.

In addition, a court in Switzerland is expected to initiate hearings in a criminal case against other alleged co-conspirators behind this fraud scheme.

The prosecutor in the case noted that “the assistance of both Otkritie Securities Limited and Threadneedle Asset Management in providing evidence to the police was crucial and this complex prosecution could not have gone ahead without their support.”