MOSCOW, September 10 (RIA Novosti) - A Moscow court has frozen 17 million rubles ($663,000) belonging to banker Alexei Frenkel, a suspect in the murder of a top banking regulator, Frenkel's lawyer said Monday.
The Basmanny Court "has arrested Frenkel's funds on accounts, and also cash confiscated during a search of his apartment," Lyudmila Aivar said.
Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov, who oversaw bank licensing and led efforts to close down dozens of banks for violations of banking legislation, particularly on money laundering, died September 14, 2006, after being shot the day before along with his driver.
Aivar said the money was arrested most likely "to provide for possible future lawsuits from the victims."
Frenkel appealed the Basmanny Court ruling to the Moscow City Court, as a motion from the Prosecutor General's Office asking to arrest the funds was considered in his absence. The court will consider the appeal September 19.
Besides Frenkel, six people, including businesswoman Liana Askerova charged with being an accomplice, are defendants in the Kozlov murder case. They are all in custody.
Askerova, a restaurant owner, is believed to be a link between the paymaster in the September 13 shooting of Kozlov, who led a crusade against money laundering and other criminal practices in the banking sector, and the contract killers. She was arrested in mid-January.
Askerova is said to have identified Frenkel as the mastermind of Kozlov's assassination.
In a letter he wrote a month before his arrest January 11, Frenkel claimed that he planned to expose a scheme that helped the Central Bank launder money through banks whose licenses it was going to revoke.
In two letters that followed his arrest, Frenkel accused the CBR of accepting bribes for entering banks into the deposit insurance system.
He said the bank had differentiated between banks automatically eligible for the insurance system and others that had to pay huge kickbacks to be enrolled. The bribes, he wrote, varied from $150,000 to $5 million, according to the size of the bank.
In his letters, Frenkel did not name officials involved in the illegal transactions and kickbacks, but cited details on illegal schemes allowing them to be tracked down.
