RE: Share Price1 Jun 2021 15:53
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The family of Pavel Maslovskiy, the co-founder of London-listed gold producer Petropavlovsk, are growing increasingly worried about the health of the businessman as he languishes in a Moscow jail cell on fraud charges.
“He was already thin when he got there and now he has requested another set of clothes which makes us believe he is thinner than he was before,” his son Alexei Maslovskiy told the Financial Times. “He is going through some physical and mental pain as well.”
Pavel, 64, was arrested in Moscow on December 24 on fraud charges. If convicted, he could face 10 years in prison. His detention came after Russia’s FSB was asked to investigate a property deal to see if it had been done at an inflated price. In 2018, a Petropavlovsk subsidiary bought an office building from Maslovskiy and his son.
One of the complaints was made by Maxim Kharin, the boardroom nominee of Petropavlovsk’s biggest shareholder UGC, a rival Russian gold miner controlled by billionaire Konstantin Strukov.
Alexei said his father’s arrest was “unlawful” and described his jail detention as a “violation of basic human rights”.
“The detention has been extended for three months. So he will be in jail at least until August 27,” he said. “We are concerned about his health because he had made numerous complaints to the medical authorities in the detention centre.”
Petropavlovsk has a market value of almost £1bn and is one of Russia’s biggest gold producers. It was founded by Pavel in 1994 with Peter Hambro, a scion of the London banking dynasty.
The company, which has suffered years of shareholder feuds, faced fresh turmoil last year after Pavel was removed as chief executive by UGC and a group of other shareholders at its AGM.
He subsequently accused UGC of trying to take control of the company by stealth and asked regulators in the UK and Russia to investigate.
UGC has always denied the claims and the UK Takeover Panel recently concluded there was insufficient evidence to conclude that UGC was acting in concert with other shareholders.
Alexei, who is based in London, said the transaction cited in the Russian criminal charge filed against his father was “trumped up”.
“It is something they concocted to get rid of my father from the scene because he has popular support within Petropavlovsk. He had to be shut down. And the best way to shut him down is isolate him in a detention centre.”
Alexei, who is facing a criminal investigation in Russia, claimed the property deal had been approved by Petropavlovsk’s aud
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