On February 15, the police detained Michael Calvey, founder and senior partner at Baring Vostok equity firm, the fund’s partners Phillipe Delpal and Vagan Abgaryan, investment director Ivan Zyuzin, along with advisor to the chairman of the board of Norvik Bank Alexei Kordichev and CEO of the First Collection Agency Maxim Vladimirov.
The executives are suspected of embezzling RUR 2.5 bln ($38 mio) when selling First Collection Agency shares to Vostochny Bank in February 2017. According to the investigators, Calvey was aware at the time of the sale of the company’s RUR 2.5 bln debt.
Baring Vostok has worked in Russia since 1994 and invested a total of $850 mio in around 30 companies such as CTC Media, Papa John’s, VkusVill and Yandex.
Established in 1991 in the Amur Region, Vostochny Bank currently operates through more than 600 branches across Russia and was the leader in Russia’s Far East in terms of assets with RUR 285 bln ($4.3 bln) as of January 2019.