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Police at Moscow's international airport Sheremetyevo have detained two Russian nationals suspected of involvement in a financial scam through Swiss-registered companies.
The men, who allegedly ran fraudulent schemes in southern Russian provinces, notably Chechnya and Daghestan, were arrested as they were trying to flee to Turkey, a regional Interior Ministry official told reporters Wednesday.
Sergei Solodovnikov, first deputy head of the ministry branch administering Russia's Federal District South, which incorporates Chechnya and Daghestan, said: "It has been established that in 2003-2005, one of the detainees, who would identify himself as a representative of Swiss consulting firm SWS and a broker for the allegedly world-famous company ISG, organized workshops in Chechnya and Daghestan, trying to lure the well-to-do into long-term savings programs, which he said envisaged $180,000 in ultimate insurance payouts to each of the investors."
More than a thousand residents of Chechnya and Daghestan agreed to pay an initial contribution of $3,000 each, hoping to eventually see it grow 60-fold. They would transfer their money to the bank accounts of ISG and SWS, both registered in Switzerland.
The two suspects, now in pre-trial detention in Daghestan, are believed to have operated a network of agents across Russia and beyond. Police are now tracking down the agents for possible complicity, and are also searching for further documentary evidence of the group's schemes elsewhere in Russia, as well as in post-Soviet Central Asian republics, Turkey, Afghanistan, India, Syria and Lebanon.
"The facts of fraud in Chechnya and Daghestan have been proved already, and an investigation is currently underway to uncover the network in other Russian regions and abroad," Solodovnikov said.
"The damage the suspects have inflicted in Russia alone totals an estimated $1.5 billion, and with [operations in] foreign countries counted in, the amount will add up to $10 billion."
He said that along with fraud charges, the men could also face charges of criminal association, and that they may have been helped in their schemes by high-ranking officials.
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