Yekaterinburg Leninsky District Court looked into the prosecution’s evidence and returned the verdict of guilty upon a 35-year-old Ilya Komarov, who had been accused of committing 123 crimes stated in Article 159 (part 4) of Russia’s Criminal Code (organized large-scale fraud), Sverdlovsk Region prosecution authorities report.

The court determined that between February 2006 and August 2007, Komarov set up a group in Pervouralsk and Yekaterinburg that dealt in stealing other people’s assets through swindles. The assets in question were money owned by VUZ Bank. Komarov was the leader of the group and took part in committing the crimes until September 2008.

The culprit knew the procedure for a private individual’s loan application and the ways to get the application approved in all the detail, so he provided the bank with knowingly false information on the borrowers and the guarantors in order to obtain these loans.

As a result, about 75m RUR worth of damage was done to VUZ Bank’s Yekaterinburg subsidiary. Later on, an out-of-court cooperation agreement was signed with Komarov, so by the time the hearings began, the accused made up for some of the damage and paid the bank over 5m RUR.

At the end of the hearing, the accused was found guilty of the charges and sentenced to five and a half years in prison conditionally and to three and a half years on parole. The sentence came into full force.