On June 29, 2006, Chkalovskiy District Court of Yekaterinburg returned a verdict on the share-selling agreement made by Chairman of Bank24.ru Sergey Lapshin and Business Club Globus CJSC. Mr Lapshin was going to sell the latter a 19.66% share holding of Stroyplastpolymer JSC, but the court found the agreement void, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region Court said to UrBC representative.

This agreement was, in fact, part of a larger transaction that involved trading the assets of Bank24.ru (including the shares of Stroyplastpolymer JSC) for a 20% share holding of Bank24.ru (which Mr Lapshin hoped to get from an entrepreneur and Yekaterinburg Duma deputy named Alexander Varaksin).

Mr Lapshin later claimed that he had actually been forced to conduct the transaction and thus decided to impeach it.

The whole thing began as early as November 22, 2004 when Alexander Khabarov, local businessperson and Yekaterinburg Duma deputy, claimed that he had bought a 20% share holding of Bank24.ru from the bank’s Chairman Alexander Belykh. Mr Khabarov explained he was going to use the holding for influencing the bank’s policies. Yet it was found out that Mr Belykh only let Mr Khabarov do the trust managing.

Three days later, four of the bank’s top managers acquired this share holding and paid 14.7 million RUR for it; the money was transferred into Mr Belykh’s account. At the same time, Mr Belykh gave 19,956 shares to Business Club Globus CJSC, controlled by Alexander Varaksin. Mr Lapshin sold another share holding (9,980 preference shares of Stroyplastpolymer JSC) to the company for 29,936 RUR.

Mr Lapshin later sent a letter to the Ministry of Home Affairs asking to make his transactions void, claiming that Mr Varaksin and Mr Khabarov had exerted pressure on him and he only agreed in order to avoid damage to the bank’s reputation.

According to Mr Lapshin, he had to exchange the bank’s assets worth 60 million RUR for a share holding with face value of 6.44 million, which is by no means a fair deal. Mr Lapshin also said he never planned on selling and was forced to do it.

All this resulted in a criminal lawsuit # 387909 based on Clause 179 (Part 2, point C) of Russian Criminal Code: Enforcement of a transaction under threat of making public information that can substantially damage the rights or legal interests of the victim or his or her relatives, in the absence of extortion, performed by an organized group of people. Mr Khabarov and Mr Varaksin were arrested; the former later died in the lock-up ward, the latter was found guilty by Oktyabrskiy District Court of Yekaterinburg on December 27, 2005 and got one year of suspended sentence and a 25,000-ruble fine. Mr Varaksin is now on the wanted persons list.

Early this June, Mr Lapshin placed a claim with Chkalovskiy District Court of Yekaterinburg, the session was scheduled for June 14, 2006 and then delayed for a fortnight. On June 29, 2006, Mr Lapshin’s claims were met.