Moscow police have issued an arrest warrant for Sergei Chupryna on charges of stealing $7.5 million from the family of the late Alexander Starovoitov, who headed the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information (FAPSI) in 1991-1998.
Chupryna remains at large, the newspaper Izvestia previously reported. His alleged accomplice, Max Mueller, faces separate charges in Switzerland.
The Interior Ministry’s central investigative department in Moscow alleges that Chupryna defrauded Starovoitov’s parents of $7.5 million.
“Starovoitov, who died in 1999, willed the money to his parents. Their friend, 55-year-old Penza native Sergei Chupryna, misled the couple about the possibility of starting a government-supported charitable fund for children in Switzerland which would subsequently bear monthly interest,” a police spokesman told RIA Novosti.
“The suspect forged power of attorney documents and then transferred $7.5 million to the accounts of several companies controlled by him and his Swiss accomplice. Chupryna managed to deceive the victims for several years, but then the scam came to light and the couple alerted the police.”
Prosecutors in Penza filed a fraud lawsuit against Chupryna in 2004 that was later transferred for further investigation to the Interior Ministry’s investigative committee in Moscow, the spokesman said.
Switzerland issued an arrest warrant for Chupryna on June 5, 2012, he said.
FAPSI was the successor organization of the KGB responsible for signals intelligence and government communications security that was formed when the Soviet-era spy agency was broken up in 1991. FAPSI itself was dissolved in 2003 and its functions transferred to other agencies.
