The Investigative Department of Ural Federal District division of Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry completed the investigation of an infamous criminal case involving Alexei Kalinichenko, who, the investigative authorities believe, deceived about 4,000 citizens of Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, Byelorussia, Ukraine, and Latvia with the help of a pyramid scheme; the damage was estimated at over 1bn RUR altogether. The victims’ representatives now started looking into the files of the case.

Alexei Kalinichenko was first heard of in 2003 when, according to the inquiry team, he and his accomplices set up three companies: Livingston Investment, Global Gaming Expo, and UTG to fool the citizens into giving away their money allegedly for stock trading at Forex interbank foreign exchange. The accused promised his victims considerable weekly interest. The people gave their savings to the trader, who used the Forex system to upload falsified data on the Internet to ‘prove’ the success of his financial activity; the money was meanwhile transferred into Kalinichenko’s personal accounts and thus stolen.

The inquiry team detected that an equivalent of over 1bn RUR belonging to his investors was stolen and transferred into foreign accounts by the accused; Alexei Kalinichenko himself fled abroad.