MOSCOW, November 28 (RAPSI) – The Moscow District Commercial Court has upheld a ruling on recovery of nearly 164 million rubles (about $2.6 million at current exchange rate) from the Tavern Taras Bulba restaurant chain owner Yury Beloivan in favor of the Federal Tax Service, according to court records.

The businessman has therefore lost a cassation appeal against rulings of the Moscow Commercial Court of March 7, 2019 and the Ninth Commercial Court of Appeals of late July. In April, a Beloivan and Anastasia Ivanova, the head of the company, were also ordered to pay 76.4 million rubles (about $1.2 million) to the tax authority.

In July, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court passed a 2-year prison sentence on Beloivan as part of the tax evasion case.

Investigators claimed that between January 2011 and March 2014, Beloivan failed to disclose the income effective principal in tax bills and stripped a taxation base to evade the payment of taxes from his 8 Tavern Taras Bulba restaurants. According to the Russian Investigative Committee, he concealed over 650 million rubles in taxes (over 10 million rubles).

The Moscow City Court in early October reduced his sentence from 24 to 21 months. In early November, Moscow’s Preobrazhensky District Court released him from serving sentence because of his illness.