The investigator filed the motion for Chichvarkin's arrest with the court on Wednesday, January 21. Anna Usacheva, head of the press service of the Moscow City Court, told Kommersant that the Basmanny District Court of Moscow would hear it on January 28. At the end of January or beginning of February, the same court will decide whether to extend the detention of four other defendants: Euroset's vice-president for security Boris Levin, his deputy Alexander Ermilin, and security service officers Sergei Katorgin and Vitaly Tsverkunov. They are charged with kidnapping, extortion and arbitrariness; as former law enforcement officers, they are held in a special block of remand prison No. 6 in Kapotnya.
According to the investigation, in early 2003 these individuals kidnapped Euroset courier Andrei Vlaskin, who was suspected of stealing a large shipment of mobile phones. He was held in rented apartments and pressured to return the phones or their value, and was released after he compensated the company for the alleged damage of 20 million rubles.
The Case and the Deal
This case was separated from the investigation into the smuggling of mobile phones to Euroset, which had been ongoing since 2005. The order charging Chichvarkin was issued on January 14: he is accused under Part 3 of Article 126 of the Russian Criminal Code (kidnapping) and Points (a) and (b) of Part 3 of Article 163 (extortion). According to law enforcement, the kidnapping of the courier and the extortion were carried out with Chichvarkin's knowledge and consent; during a search of the security service premises, documents for the rental of the apartments where Vlaskin was held were found in a safe, and the funds for the rent, according to the prosecution, were spent with his approval.
According to Kommersant's sources in law enforcement, in late December and early January Chichvarkin was sent several summonses for questioning; since he could not be reached, charges were filed in absentia and the businessman was placed on the federal wanted list. If the court grants the motion, the Prosecutor General's Office will put him on the international wanted list through Interpol and begin preparing an extradition request.
Shortly after the case was opened, in September 2008, Chichvarkin and his partner Timur Artemyev sold 100% of Euroset to entrepreneur Alexander Mamut for $1.25 billion including debt estimated at $850 million; excluding debt, the deal was worth about $400 million. Mamut, in turn, sold 49.9% of the retailer to VimpelCom (44% owned by Alfa Group) with an option for another 25%. Before the deal closed, MTS and a pool of investors had also bid for Euroset.
The Party and the Defense
In autumn, at the founding congress of the Right Cause party on November 16, 2008, Chichvarkin was appointed commissioner for holding the founding conference of the Moscow branch and, on his own initiative, took up the party's branding. However, the documents for registering Right Cause were submitted to the Ministry of Justice on January 21 without the Moscow branch; the party emphasized that "it is not the party that is unable to form a branch, but Chichvarkin." Co-chairman Leonid Gozman told Kommersant that if the rumors about the charges and the wanted list are unfounded and the businessman returns, he will, I hope, manage to create the branch, "and if he does not return, we will find a new commissioner." His colleague Boris Titov said that "it is not very proper to look for someone to replace Zhenya before we hear from him 'No, I can't.'"
Defense lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov told Kommersant that he last saw Chichvarkin at an interrogation in November as a witness, and in December the investigator responded negatively to a question about the need for new meetings. According to the lawyer, the defense must be notified of any investigative actions, but he had not been notified of anything. He also stated that Chichvarkin could not have been involved in the crimes attributed to his subordinates, since he "dealt with strategic issues in the company."
Euroset said that Chichvarkin holds no official position in the company and has not been seen since the New Year, and that law enforcement has not approached the retailer. Attempts to reach Timur Artemyev were unsuccessful: his number was forwarded to an assistant, who said he was "in a different time zone, where it is the middle of the night."
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