VLADIVOSTOK, November 27 (RIA Novosti) – A regional legislature in Russia’s Far Eastern Primorye Territory voted on Wednesday to revoke the mandate of a lawmaker who held on to his foreign assets in contravention of a new law.
Under the recently introduced law, Russian civil servants were required to withdraw their money from foreign banks and dispose of their other foreign assets by August 19.
Local prosecutors said Yevgeny Ovechkin, a member of the ruling United Russia party and a speaker of the Primorye Territory parliament in 2011-2012, was a shareholder in two foreign companies.
Ovechkin resigned from the speaker’s post shortly after a criminal case was launched against him on suspicion he had misappropriated fuel worth over 38 million rubles (over $1.1 million) from an oil firm. His office was searched as part of that investigation.
“The ex-speaker explained his non-compliance with the [foreign assets] law by the fact that he was unable to transfer ownership of the shares [to another person] because they were seized by an investigator as part of investigative actions and the lawmaker himself was placed under house arrest,” a spokeswoman for the local prosecutor’s office, Yelena Barabash, told lawmakers ahead of the vote. “However, his claims were rejected as groundless.”
Out of 33 lawmakers who were present at Wednesday’s vote, 19 voted in favor of stripping Ovechkin of his mandate.
The former speaker was not present at the meeting.
