$1M Found In Storchak’s Apartment

Reuters

Published: December 7, 2007 (Issue # 1330)

MOSCOW — A prosecutor said Wednesday that $1 million in cash had been found in the apartment of Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak, who faces charges of attempting to embezzle $43 million.

The lead investigator in the case also told Rossiiskaya Gazeta that Storchak, who has denied any wrongdoing, had been detained on Nov. 15 to prevent him from fleeing the country.

“A sum equivalent to $1 million was found in Storchak’s apartment,” Dmitry Dovgy, an official in the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office, told Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

Storchak has been charged along with two businessmen in relation to a failed attempt to recover a debt owed by Algeria. He faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted. The Finance Ministry declined to comment.

“I repeat that there is sufficient proof of the guilt of the deputy minister,” Dovgy said, according to a version of the Rossiiskaya Gazeta story published on the paper’s web site Wednesday.

Storchak, the country’s foreign-debt negotiator and supervisor of the $144 billion stabilization fund, failed to convince judges on Monday to release him from prison while under investigation.

The Prosecutor General’s Office said earlier Wednesday that they would not press charges against Storchak in relation to a separate case concerning a debt deal struck with Kuwait.