BANGKOK, June 15 (RIA Novosti) - Russian businessman Sergei Polonsky, charged with fraud in Russia earlier this week, is not allowed to leave Cambodia before his trial in the southeastern Asian state is over, his lawyer said on Saturday.
Polonsky, the former head of the Mirax Group construction firm (now renamed Potok), was charged in absentia on Friday as part of a criminal case involving the embezzlement of over 5.7 billion rubles ($176.2 million) from the participants of the Kutuzovskaya Milya cooperative residential construction project in Moscow.
He is currently on bail in Cambodia, where he was arrested together with two Russian friends on December 30, 2012, for allegedly attacking the six-men crew of a boat ferrying them from a Cambodian island to the resort city of Sihanoukville.
“Yesterday I learned about charges filed against Polonsky in Moscow. Clearly, if charges are filed, he has to respond to them in court in person. However, the case in Cambodia is not closed yet and will at best be completed in late July or early August,” said one of the businessman’s Cambodian lawyers.
Polonsky was temporarily released in April on $50,000 bail and on condition he could not leave the country until his trial.
The lawyer said that Polonsky’s journey to Moscow until his trial in Cambodia is over would be “a violation of fundamental principles of criminal and extradition laws.”
