Moscow's Basmanny Court granted the request of the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office (GSU SKP) to arrest Euroset's vice president for security, Boris Levin, Interfax reported. The court was still considering a similar request for the arrest of the second detained Euroset manager, deputy head of security Andrei Ermilov.
Both managers were detained on Tuesday during a search at Euroset's central office. As SKP representative Vladimir Markin explained, the search was connected to a criminal case in progress concerning extortion, arbitrariness, and the kidnapping in 2003 of another former Euroset employee by a "high-ranking Euroset employee" (referring to Levin).
The case was opened under Article 126 of the Russian Criminal Code (kidnapping, punishable by 4–8 years' imprisonment), Article 163 (extortion, up to four years), and Article 330 (arbitrariness, up to five years' imprisonment). Investigators separated it from another case opened in 2005 following the import into Russia of a large batch of smuggled phones. According to the SKP statement, Euroset's involvement in phone smuggling has been established.
Levin's lawyer, Marat Faizulin, told Interfax that his client considers the preventive measure unjustified. As grounds for Levin's arrest, the investigation cited his possession of a foreign passport, but "the mere fact of having a foreign passport is not grounds to believe that a person will flee," the lawyer is convinced.
As a Interior Ministry official previously told Vedomosti, the kidnapping complaint involving Boris Levin was filed by a former Euroset expeditor whom the company allegedly accused of theft in 2003. Euroset co-owner Timur Artemyev denies that any company employee kidnapped anyone or engaged in extortion or arbitrariness. The suspects also do not admit guilt, says Levin's lawyer.
The search at Euroset and the arrest of the managers occurred several months after information appeared in the press about a possible sale of Euroset to a consortium of investors including MTS (MTS, Artemyev, and Euroset's second co-owner Yevgeny Chichvarkin deny that such a deal is being prepared). "Euroset is one of our main retail partners, so we are closely monitoring developments and hope that the situation around the company will be resolved favorably," MTS President Mikhail Shamolin told Vedomosti yesterday. "At the time, Euroset was among the first companies to support the idea of switching to revenue-sharing settlements with operators, which became one of the factors contributing to the improvement of the quality of MTS's subscriber base and, ultimately, ensured MTS's leadership in subscriber growth," Shamolin noted.
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