OREANDA-NEWS. March 14, 2012. At a hearing in the High Court of Justice in London, Otkritie made significant progress in its fraud case. Otkritie claims that early last year certain former employees using offshore companies orchestrated a sophisticated fraud involving Argentine debt securities and laundered the proceeds.

Today, Mr Justice Flaux granted a default judgment for USD 34 million in cash and real estate against a Panamanian company, previously owned by former employee Georgy Urumov. The judge ordered the transfer to Otkritie of the company’s property in St. Johns Wood, London bought last year for USD 30 million. This is a major recovery for Otkritie.

The judge also ordered that 10 other parties implicated in the frauds be added to the case, including former Moscow trader Sergey Kondratyuk, who is already in custody in Switzerland on suspicion of fraud and money laundering, and the third of the main conspirators, former trader Ruslan Pinaev, who is a fugitive.

Otkritie has been working in close cooperation with the City of London Police and the Geneva prosecutor, each of whom has begun a criminal investigation into fraud and money laundering. Former London fixed income trader Georgy Urumov, already a defendant in the case, was arrested last year in London and is currently on bail.

Through its investigations and with the support of the High Court and authorities in jurisdictions such as Switzerland, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, the Bahamas, Gibraltar and the United States, Otkritie has already traced and frozen nearly USD 100 million in stolen assets around the world.

Alexey Karahan, deputy CEO of Otkritie said: "We are pleased with the significant progress made today in recovering USD 34 million and we are confident we will make a full recovery. This progress underlines the strength of Otkritie's claims and shows our determination to leave no stone unturned in the recovery of stolen assets."