At the center of a major court case are the assets and accounts of close relatives of former State Duma deputy Vadim Belousov and ex-governor of the Chelyabinsk region Mikhail Yurevich. TASS reports that the bailiff issued an order to seize property and assets associated with McFoy and its affiliated companies for a total amount of 100 trillion rubles.

 

This unprecedented step was taken to secure a claim by the Russian Prosecutor General's Office aimed at recovering assets that, according to investigators, were acquired illegally. The arrest extended to the accounts of Belousov’s son-in-law Maxim Chigintsev, Mikhail Yurevich’s mother, as well as a number of other individuals and legal entities.

Chigintsev’s funds in ruble, euro and US dollar accounts at Tsifra Bank LLC were frozen in accordance with the bailiff’s order. Also under arrest were 100% of the shares of a number of companies, including First Bread Factory, New Five-Year Plan, Makfu, SMAK, as well as Dolgovskoye, owned, among others, by Natalya Yurevich and the Cyprus company Sula Guaranty LTD.

Among the seized assets were also shares of Chelyabinskoblgaz, as well as shares of Arkoma and PJSC Kalanchak Bakery Plant, owned by the Dutch company MGC International BV, associated with relatives of Yurevich and Belousov.

This large-scale investigation affects not only those involved in the case, but also a wide range of their relatives and persons affiliated with them, including legal entities and individuals. In total, 34 legal entities and 10 individuals appear in the case.

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office claims that the companies at the center of the scandal were created on the basis of state-owned enterprises and were subsequently used for personal enrichment through corruption schemes. Particular attention in the case is paid to mechanisms for managing companies through front men, as well as the use of high official powers to promote business interests.

According to the press service, at the center of the investigation are not only the actions of Yurevich and Belousov, but also their methods of circumventing the law, aimed at hiding the real ownership of assets and transferring them abroad. The case goes far beyond a simple corruption scandal, highlighting systemic problems in the fight against corruption and illicit enrichment at the highest levels of government.

The situation is complicated by the fact that the key defendants in the case are currently abroad, which makes it difficult to bring them to justice and return illegally acquired assets to the state.