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Lithuania Denies Asylum to Russian Banker
The Administrative Court of Vilnius invalidated the decision of the Lithuanian Interior Ministry to grant asylum to Igor Babenko, former executive of Stavropol-based subsidiary of MENATEP-St. Petersburg.
Russian prosecutors charged Igor Babenko with fraud and money laundry by default. He presumably embezzled 333 million rubles, official reports. Executives of the Trast bank, the legal successor of MENATEP-St. Petersburg, believe that Babenko was charged for purely financial offenses without any covert political reasons.
The Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office appealed the decision of the migration department to grant asylum to Igor Babenko at the Vilnius District Administrative Court. Prosecutors insisted that Babenko had been charged in Russia for bank fraud rather than for political reasons. Igor Babenko claims that he is persecuted in Russia because he “headed an affiliate of the bank owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The operative part of the decision was pronounced at the close-door session yesterday to invalidate the verdict of the Interior Ministry’s migration department.
The decision can be appealed within the next seven days at the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania. Babenko’s lawyer said he will appeal the decision. Should the defense fail to win the case, Igor Babenko will be delivered to Russia. The court already ruled to extradite him to Russia last September but the Lithuanian Court of Appeal suspended the ruling after the banker had been granted political asylum in the country.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of May 23, 2006
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