MOSCOW, September 11 (RAPSI) – Moscow’s Presnensky District Court scheduled hearing of a case against Stanislav Seroka, ex-deputy board chair of Mirax Group (renamed as Potok) corporation, founded by notorious tycoon Sergey Polonsky, for September 20, his lawyer Yury Kachan told RAPSI on Wednesday.

The former subordinate of Polonsky is charged with evading taxes amounting to more than 150 million rubles ($2.3 million).

Investigators believe that the Open Space company, a subsidiary of Mirax Group, which was one of the investors of a residential compound in central Moscow, failed to pay a tax on income for 2012-2013 in the amount of 150.3 million rubles.

According to the investigators, top managers of Mirax Group developed a criminal scheme to reduce a tax base. They allegedly involved Seroka in the creation of a fictious supplementary agreement to increase the Open Space company’s investment contribution to the construction by raising the costs of apartments.

Seroka pleads not guilty denying being a deputy board chair of Mirax Group and a head of the Open Space. He claims he left the corporation in January 2012.

Polonsky himself was sentenced Polonsky to 5 years in prison in July 2017. However, he was released him from jail in a courtroom because the statute of limitation had expired.

Two other defendants, Alexander Paperno, Head of the Mirax Group Finance Department, and Alexey Pronyakin, CEO of Avanta company, were sentenced to 3 and 2 years behind bars respectively. They were released from punishment as well. Their sentences were upheld in November 2017.

According to investigators, Polonsky, aided by Paperno and Pronyakin, defrauded participants of shared construction apartment projects of 2.6 billion rubles ($40 million at the current exchange rate), thus committing a serious crime.