MOSCOW, June 17 (RIA Novosti) - Prosecutors in Moscow have launched procedures to have a Russian tycoon wanted on kidnapping and extortion charges extradited from Britain, a Russian daily said on Wednesday.
Co-founder of Russian mobile phone retailer Euroset Yevgeny Chichvarkin has been on the wanted list in Russia since late January on suspicion of involvement in the 2003 abduction of the firm's shipping agent, who had allegedly stolen large quantities of mobile phones, as well as the extortion of money from him.
Kommersant said British judiciary officials had visited the Russian Prosecutor General's Office to agree on a list of documents required for the extradition request to be considered in London. The paper said Russian prosecutors had prepared the documents and would soon send them to the U.K.
The charges against Chichvarkin were brought as part of a case against the former Euroset vice president and several other company officials. The businessman was earlier reported to have been put on an international wanted list.
A number of fugitives from Russian justice, including billionaire Boris Berezovsky and former Chechen separatist emissary Akhmed Zakayev, have made their homes in Britain, with some of them gaining British citizenship or political asylum. Moscow has so far failed to have any of them extradited.
A lawyer acting for Andrei Vlaskin, the Euroset agent under investigation for the suspected robbery, said the case against her client was a set-up.
"The case contains no serious proof of Vlaskin stealing any phones, but only contradictory testimony by some witnesses," Marina Konchevskaya told the daily. "They apparently chose him as a scapegoat to bear responsibility for some balance arrears, and also decided to beat the money out of him."
Several Euroset security personnel had held Vlaskin at a rented apartment beating him and demanding he pay for the allegedly stolen phones. Fearing for his life, his relatives raised the money by selling his car and a country house, the lawyer said.
Kommersant said a probe had been opened against the police officials suspected of setting Vlaskin up in 2003.
Lawyers acting for the detained Euroset suspects declined to comment on the new probe, saying they had not been formally notified of it, the daily said.
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