Mikhail Fridman (left) and then Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov (right)
Photo: Dmitry Dukhanin
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Kasyanov Won’t Testify
Former PM Mikhail Kasyanov, one of the figures in the criminal case of illegal privatization of two state dachas on the outskirts of Moscow, has left Russia again. Kasyanov decided to continue his vacation and headed for the Mediterranean Sea a week after his return to Moscow, according to official reports. In the meantime, the Prosecutor General’s Office questioned Alfa Group President Mikhail Fridman, the owner of one of the dachas, as a witness.
The prosecutors questioned Mr. Fridman late July as a in to the case of privatization of Sosnovka-1 and Sosnovka-3 dachas, Kommersant learnt. The investigators wanted to know how Mikhail Fridman had purchased the state dacha Sosnovka-3 in Troitse-Lykovo and whether he was involved in its sale at auction. The prosecutors earlier learnt that the auction had been held without a required announcement in mass media. Mikhail Fridman said he had rented Sosnovka-3 since 2002 from Evikhon oil company, which, in its turn, had rented it from the state in 1996 for 49 years. Former co-chairman of the Federation Council Vladimir Shumeyko, one a co-founder of Evikhon and the resident of the adjacent dacha Sosnovka-1, allegedly offered Fridman Sosnovka-3. Fridman agreed and bought the dacha through his lawyers at $300,000, which he had not viewed as an artificially low price.
Once the deal over Sosnovka-3 had been closed, Mikhail Fridman said, his legal service started working on the purchase of Sosnovka-1, where a Mikhail de Buar resided. The man easily relinquished the dacha to Fridman. But after all the documents had been drawn up, “high-ranking representatives of the state” came and said that Fridman “should have agreed the matter with them, not with Mr. de Buar and now he should sell the dacha to “the one they will say to.” The visitors allegedly named Mikhail Kasyanov, then Russian premier. Afterwards, Mikhail Fridman gave up the idea of buying Sosnovka-1. As a result, the dacha landed in the hands of the firm set up by Kasyanov. The head of Alfa Group refuted the theory of the Duma’s deputy Alexander Khinshein, at whose his request the prosecutors initiated the case, that Mr. Fridman or Alfa Bank credited Mikhail Kasyanov with 11 million rubles on favorable terms to buy Sosnovka-1. Mikhail Fridman denied any “credit relations of Alfa Bank and Kasyanov”.
Meanwhile, Mikhail Kasyanov, the main figure in the dacha case, left with his family abroad again. The head of Mk Analytica returned home on July 25 to state that the “slander campaign” to discredit him was part of “a general strategy by the authorities to cleanse the political field completely”. MK Analytica circulated a report yesterday saying Kasyanov would continue his vacation at the Middeterrranean Sea with his family until late August. The company declined to answer if Kasyanov had received summons from the Prosecutor’s Office.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 02, 2005
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