MOSCOW, October 8 (RAPSI) – The Moscow City Court on Tuesday overturned return of the Seventh Studio stage company embezzlement case involving the Gogol Center theater director Kirill Serebrennikov to a prosecutor’s office and remanded it for a new proceeding, RAPSI reported from the courtroom.

Decision to vacate a measure of restraint against the defendant was upheld.

The court therefore granted an appeal filed by prosecutors in part. The matter will be considered against by a new composition of Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court.

Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court held that the case be returned to prosecutors on September 11. A judge said that there were violations in the case that could not be rectified as part of the trial. Moreover, the defendants’ travel restrictions were vacated.

Defendants in the case along with Serebrennikov are producer Alexey Malobrodsky, ex-head of Seventh Studio stage company Yury Itin, ex-official of Russia’s Culture Ministry and current director of the Russian Academic Youth Theater Sophia Apfelbaum.

Ex-chief accountant of Seventh Studio Nina Maslyayava is tried separately. She admitted guilt in full.

Other defendants pleaded not guilty calling charges against them pointless and absurd. Moreover, Serebrennikov and Malobrodsky lay the blame on Maslyayeva.

One more defendant, producer Yekaterina Voronova has been put on the international wanted list and arrested in absentia.

According to investigators, defendants in the case stole 133 of 214 million rubles ($3.3 million) of budget funds allocated to the Seventh Studio company in 2011-2014 for development and popularization of contemporary art in Russia as part of the project Platforma.

Serebrennikov was arrested in late August 2017 and then placed under house arrest. In early November, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court seized assets belonging to Serebrennikov including apartment, car, and money in the amount of more than 360,000 rubles ($5,300), over €60,000, and $4,000.

Investigators believe that he was an organizer of the budget money embezzlement. He allegedly created Seventh Studio stage company to actualize Platforma project for promotion of art and called alleged accomplices into the organization.