MOSCOW, September 12 (RAPSI) – Real estate tycoon Sergei Polonsky, who is wanted in Russia for embezzlement, was granted Cambodian citizenship, his attorney Diana Tatosova told the RAPSI legal news agency on Thursday.
"I was told that Polonsky was granted Cambodian citizenship, and a passport was issued to him," the attoney said, refusing to cite the source of the information.
In the summer, Polonsky tried to apply for Israeli citizenship during his brief stay there after being released from a Cambodian jail where he had been placed following an alleged attack on a Cambodian boat crew during New Year’s celebrations. In August he left Israel “out of fears for his safety” and returned to his private island in Cambodia.
Polonsky, the former head of the Mirax Group developing company, was charged in absentia last month as part of a criminal case involving the embezzlement of over 5.7 billion rubles ($176.2 million) from the participants in an upmarket cooperative residential construction project in Moscow. The development project has come to be known as the Kutuzovskaya Miliya case.
More than 80 people lost money because of Polonsky’s actions in the Kutuzovskaya Miliya case, the Interior Ministry said. Russian police said August 2 that Israeli authorities had informed them that Polonsky was in Israel on a tourist visa valid until September 27.
