ST. PETERSBURG, September 10 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov) — Businessman Alexey Eliseyev will face trial for alleged siphoning 5.6 billion rubles (about $76 million) from self-regulating construction organizations.

The criminal case against Eliseyev was forwarded to the Dzerzhinsky District Court of St. Petersburg, the United Press Service of St. Petersburg Courts told RAPSI. 

Earlier, businessman Alexey Shuvalov, a co-conspirator in the case, was given a 4-year suspended sentence.

Prosecutors claim that the theft scheme was organized by Eliseyev and Shuvalov. They founded self-regulating construction organizations and invited companies specializing in construction, engineering, architectural and construction design to join.

These self-regulating construction organizations collected entrance fees, membership fees, contributions, and created compensation funds. Then the self-regulating construction organizations entered into sham agreements, and the money was withdrawn to the accounts of shell firms.

Eliseyev went to Spain to flee justice where he established Nord-West Capital company transfer the stolen money, according to prosecutors. 

He was arrested in 2018, and in 2020 extradited to Russia.

At the same time, the Dzerzhinsky District Court is hearing a case against the former head of the North-West Department of the Russian Federal Service for Environmental, Technological, and Nuclear Supervision Rostekhnadzor Grigory Slabikov and his daughter Elena Slabikova. The investigation into this high-profile case began in the summer of 2017. Slabikov stands charged with assisting in the registration as SROs of companies controlled by members of the criminal group, and also exercising general patronage, preventing inspections, and received at least a million rubles (about $14,000 at the current exchange rate) for each operation. Investigators allege that Slabikova was an intermediary in the transfer of money to her father.

Also among the defendants in the case are entrepreneurs Yulia Kamenskaya and Ekaterina Goltseva.

Earlier, the court sentenced to 3 years of conditional imprisonment entrepreneur Marat Kayumov, who, as the court established, was the director of the SRO Union Standard-Research and the general director of ZAO Financial company StandardInvest; the man ensured the execution of contracts, carried out settlement operations, bank transfers, opened accounts with credit institutions.