MOSCOW, March 19 (RAPSI) – The Ninth Commercial Court of Appeals has dismissed an appeal against a lower court order to recover  about 69 million rubles ($1 million) jointly from the Tavern Taras Bulba restaurant chain owner Yury Beloivan and ex-director of City limited liability company Olga Ponomareva, according to court records.

The appeal has been lodged by Ponomareva.

In early December, the Moscow Commercial Court granted a Federal Tax Service’s claim to collect the money from Beloivan and Ponomareva.

This is not the first ruling against Beloivan in favor the tax authority.

In late November, the Moscow District Commercial Court upheld a ruling on recovery of nearly 164 million rubles (about $2.6 million at current exchange rate) from Beloivan in favor of the Federal Tax Service. The businessman 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).

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.