MOSCOW, February 20 (RAPSI) – The Moscow Basmanny District Court has ruled to extend house arrest of Anatoly Kairo, the development department director of the major car dealer Rolf involved in a case over siphoning 4 billion rubles ($63 million) abroad, the defendant’s lawyer Anton Gusev informs RAPSI.

This measure of restraint was prolonged until May 25.

Kairo is charged with transferring the money to a Cyprus-registered company using fake documents. He pleads not guilty.

There are three more defendants in the case including Sergey Petrov, the car dealer founder and ex-parliament member. In early September, 2019, he was put on the international wanted list; a Moscow court issued an arrest warrant for him in absentia as well as a representative of Panabel Ltd. Georgia Kafkalia and ex-CEO of Rolf Tatana Lukovetskaya.

According to investigators, Petrov, who was deemed to be the owner of Rolf and Rolf Estate, as well as Cyprus-registered Panabel Ltd., conspired with the top managers of these companies to siphon the money received from the business activities of the car dealer. In order to conceal the scheme, the defendants allegedly arranged a false agreement aimed at selling a stock of shares of Rolf Estate by Panabel Ltd. at inflated price of 4 billion rubles.

The money was transferred to the Panabel Ltd. bank account in Austria and later through vehicles controlled by Petrov dissipated, according to the investigation.

Petrov said earlier that the raid on his car sales offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg was aimed at seizing control of the business.According to the civil ombudsman for protection of detained businesspersons’ rights Alexander Khurudzhi, the Rolf case looks like an attempt to criminalize standard corporate procedures and creates criminal risks for any type of international economic activity.