The Court of Verknyaya Pyshma completed the hearings connected with the criminal suit of accountant of Sredneuralskiy subsidiary of UralTransBank Oksana Schegolkova who was charged with theft and fraud. According to the prosecution, Ms Schegolkova had stolen over 10m RUR from the accounts of the bank’s clients, so they insisted on the maximal penalty of 10 years in prison.

This legal action was initiated by the local prosecution bodies at the end of 2005; the charge concerned Part 4 of Article 159 of Russian Criminal Code (large-scale fraud). The documents were placed with the court this summer; they indicate that Ms Schegolkova had been using her access to the clients’ accounts to transfer the money into the account of her husband Alexander Fedulov from December 2004 to November 2005. The theft thus amounted to 148 clients robbed of 10,870,000 RUR. The offenders were particularly careful to choose the clients that had at least 100,000 RUR in their accounts so that the disappearance of money could remain unheeded. Mr Fedulov withdrew the money using an ATM on the day it got into his account, and Ms Schegolkova was allegedly forging the financial reports. ‘This is why the actual receipts and expenditure did not look suspicious,’ said Deputy Public Prosecutor of Verknyaya Pyshma Sergey Kravchuk. He explained that the legal action was only taken after several clients placed their complaints with the Yekaterinburg headquarters management simultaneously. Ms Schegolkova and her husband had to give a written promise not to leave the town. They both pleaded guilty; the verdict is to be returned on October 1, 2006.