The Russia’s Investigative Committee together with the Federal Security Service have searched a storehouse in Saint-Petersburg and found some antique furniture and pieces of art there. All the articles had to be transferred by a Finnish logistics company to the USA for the name of Zhanna Bulokh, the wife of the First Deputy Chairman of Moscow Region Government – Finance Minister Alexey Kuznetsov. The investigators confiscated 82 pieces of antique furniture, 113 paintings of famous artists, including futurist David Burlyuk, two ancient icons about 1.5-meter-high each and 13 boxes of rare books. At this point it is known that paintings by Burlyuk are evaluated high enough with their cost at Sotheby’s Auction House reaching 200-700 thousand pounds of sterling.

The investigators have enough reasons to believe that the said objects had been bought by the money stolen by Kuznetsov, Zhanna Bulokh and their accomplices from the Moscow Region budget. The confiscated objects were arrested and will be deposited with the Hermitage Museum, that arranged special conditions for that.

As of the main accused, Kuznetsov, the investigators have consolidated in 340 volumes of the case the evidence of his involvement in such crimes as swindling, committed by an organized group on a very large scale (part 4 of article 159 of the RF Penal Code), money laundering (part 3 of article 174.1) and embezzlement (part 4 of article 160). The total sum of the damage caused to Moscow Region budget is over 10 billion rubles.

The process of extraditing Kuznetsov from France at the request of Russian law enforcement officials has been going on over a year now. In January 2014, the court of the town of Aix-en-Provence in France ruled to extradite former official in Russia, however, later the decision was abolished. The hearing to make a final decision on this matter will take place in the city of Lyons on 17 October. We do hope that this long review of the request to extradite Kuznetsov has nothing to do with political motives or the position of the USA towards Russia. One should not forget, that Zhanna Bulokh contributed a large sum of money into the US economy when bought an alit flat in Brooklyn. All the property had been gained by criminal ways and as we see there are still attempts to take it out from the Russian Federation. We hope that justice will prevail as there are all legal reasons for Kuznetsov to appear in court in Russia, as well as Zhanna Bulokh, who is internationally wanted.

Head of Media Relations                                                                                                     V.I. Markin