MOSCOW, April 9 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian Interior Ministry announced Wednesday it had submitted a new request on the extradition of fugitive Russian businessman Sergei Polonsky from Cambodia.
“The Interior Ministry’s Investigative Department has prepared a new request for the extradition of the defendant to Russia due to the altered volume of accusations against Sergei Polonsky," the statement said.
The relevant documents have already been sent to the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, the ministry added.
Polonsky is wanted in Russia on embezzlement charges, but a Cambodian court rejected a Russian extradition request in January, releasing the eccentric former owner of the Mirax real estate group from jail.
The businessman spent three months in jail in Cambodia last year on kidnapping charges. After posting bail he fled to Israel, where he sought citizenship in an apparent bid to shield himself from extradition to Russia.
He subsequently returned to Cambodia, where he was arrested in November for a second time and jailed in a high security prison in the capital, Phnom Penh, before being released in January.
Russian investigators allege that Polonsky was involved in a $175 million fraud scheme in an upscale Moscow residential project, in which more than 80 people lost money.
The businessman and his lawyers said the Cambodian court has refused to extradite him to Russia.
