MOSCOW, December 10 (RIA Novosti) – The chief executive of Uralkali, Russia’s biggest potash fertilizer producer, has been transferred from a pretrial detention center in Moscow and placed under house arrest, a prison spokesman said Tuesday.
CEO Vladislav Baumgertner, detained in Minsk in August after his company pulled out of a cartel deal with its Belarusian partner, was allowed to return to Moscow last month on condition that local authorities pursue allegations that he caused severe financial damage to both companies.
Baumgertner, who shared a cell with three other inmates in Moscow, will now have to wear an electronic bracelet so that authorities can “monitor his compliance with the terms of his house arrest,” said Sergei Tsygankov, a spokesman for the Federal Penitentiary Service.
The CEO, who insists he is innocent, was charged with abuse of office a day after returning to Russia. His company’s scrapping of the cartel deal caused a sharp drop in potash prices and huge losses of income for Belaruskali.
Uralkali has denied any impropriety, and Baumgertner was recently re-elected to the company’s board of directors.
