MOSCOW, August 4 (RAPSI) — The Russian Prosecutor General's Office is asking the Moscow Gagarinsky District court to collect in favor of the state more than $126 million from ex-Minister of the Open Government Mikhail Abyzov and Alfa-Bank, the press service of the court informs RAPSI.

The court registered a lawsuit initiated by prosecutors against Abyzov and Alfa-Bank seeking to recover from the defendants more than $126 million in favor of the state. A preliminary meeting on this claim is scheduled for August 12 this year, the court noted.

Prosecutors demand the recovery of $22 million from Abyzov, as well as about $31 million and about 5,6 billion rubles (circa $5.6 million at the current exchange rate) from the bank, according to the statement.

This May, the Moscow City Court ruled in favor of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, which sought that over 32.5 billion rubles ($435 million at the current exchange rate) worth of funds owned by Mikhail Abyzov were forfeited to the State.

In October 2020, the Moscow Gagarinsky District Court ruled to forfeit to the State 32.5 billion rubles jointly and severally from Abyzov and a number of companies.

In mid-August last year, the Russian Investigative Committee of Russia completed its investigation of the ex-minister and other defendants.

According to investigators, Abyzov, being the beneficial owner of a number of offshore commercial organizations, created and headed a criminal community: acting in complicity with other persons, he fraudulently stole funds in the amount of 4 billion rubles ($54 million) from Sibirskaya Energeticheskaya Kompaniya and Regionalnye Elektricheskiye Seti. Later, the embezzled funds were moved overseas.

The fact of the legalization of funds by Abyzov and other defendants was established thanks to effective interaction with Russian finance watchdog Rosfinmonitoring and with the assistance of the competent authorities of the Republic of Cyprus, as the Investigative Committee had informed earlier.