A man arrested for allegedly stealing $17 million in cash is being threatened and abused by his fellow inmates, who are trying to get him to disclose the money’s location, a lawyer for the suspect said Wednesday.
Yevgeny Skoblikov was arrested last month, soon after he told police that about $6 million and 7 million euros ($10.5 million) in cash were stolen from his rented Moscow apartment. He said the money, stored in several suitcases, belonged to his clients, who had received it as inheritance.
He says he withdrew the funds shortly before the robbery.
Skoblikov was authorized to receive the money for the family of Sergei Rovbel, but instead of transferring the money to them, he took it and faked the robbery, investigators said. “The pensioners said they hadn’t asked the lawyer to withdraw the money,” a law enforcement source told Interfax.
He is charged with major fraud and if convicted faces up to 10 years in prison. Skoblikov says he is innocent and would agree to take lie-detector tests and truth serums to prove it, the report said.
Investigators have not yet found the money. Skoblikov’s lawyer, Anatoly Garanchar, said Wednesday that his client’s jail mates were “physically pressuring Skoblikov, trying to find out where [the money] is now,” Interfax reported.
Also Wednesday, Moscow City Court approved Skoblikov’s arrest. The original order was made Oct. 31 by Moscow’s Kuzminsky District Court.
Rovbel owned the Krastonnel construction company before dying of a heart attack at the age of 47 in April. He left his money to his elderly parents, who live in Novosibirsk, Nikolai and Zoya Rovbel, investigators said.
The Rovbels say they inherited about $200 million and 200 million euros from their son, RIA-Novosti reported.
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