The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has dropped its investigation into Alfa Bank co-founder Mikhail Fridman on two of three charges. On this subject writing The Financial Times (FT), citing sources.
The NCA, in particular, cleared Friedman of charges of conspiracy to deceive the Home Office and conspiracy to give false testimony, the publication reports. At the same time, the department continues to investigate cases related to money laundering.
An NCA spokesman confirmed to the newspaper that the agency had partially dropped its investigation into a 58-year-old Russian man detained in London in December 2022. The FT’s interlocutor did not specify the man’s name.
In early December 2022, the NCA reported the arrest of a wealthy Russian businessman at his “multi-million dollar mansion” on suspicion of money laundering, conspiracy to deceive the UK Home Office and to give false witness. A TASS source reported that it was Fridman. Alfa Bank denied the businessman had anything to do with what happened.
Two other people were arrested along with Fridman. According to the NCA, one of them left the building with a bag, which was later found to contain several thousand pounds in cash. All three were released on bail after questioning.
After the start of the military operation in Ukraine, Fridman and another co-founder of Alfa-Bank, Petr Aven, fell under the sanctions of the United Kingdom and the European Union. Both challenge in court their inclusion on the sanctions list.
In March 2022, the FT announced that the businessmen would sell stakes in Alfa Bank to their business partner Andrey Kosogov for 178 billion rubles. The bank confirmed this information.
A year after the sanctions were imposed, in March 2023, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul offered to lift sanctions on Russian businessmen if they condemned military actions in Ukraine and transferred some of their fortune to the restoration of Ukrainian infrastructure. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “such proposals are unlikely to be taken seriously.”
