The Investigative Committee is probing a criminal case over the illegal use of land plots allocated for the construction of embassy buildings in western Moscow, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Interfax. “The criminal case has been opened on fraud charges,” he said.
Vedemosti reported that the plots wound up in the hands of Yelena Baturina’s Inteko company as a result of allegedly improper title transfers. Inteko maintains that its ownership is legal.
The case concerns an area of more than 16 hectares near Minskoye Shosse that was supposed to have been used to build missions for China, India, Cuba, Vietnam, Guinea, Afghanistan, Ghana, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Thailand, Mozambique and North Korea, as per a presidential order in 1993.
(Vedomosti, Interfax)
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