The Court of Florence, Italy refused to extradite Alexei Kalinichenko to Russia, despite the fact that this country’s investigative authorities believe the former Bank24.ru executive had stolen over a billion RUR from customers in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and other Russian cities. The court looked into the entries made by Kalinichenko’s former customers on his websites and came to the conclusion that the suspect’s life and safety would be seriously jeopardized if he was handed over to the Russian authorities, Kommersant reported on August 6, 2009.

‘Alexei Kalinichenko was first heard of in 2006 when he set up United FX-Traders Group (UTG) and its daughter enterprise Global Gaming Expo (GGE), both of which were registered in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. GGE dealt in trust management of Russian citizens’ financial assets, mainly through Forex, an interbank market. The company had a number of subsidiaries in several Russian regions, so the investigative team believes over 4,000 people from Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Sverdlovsk and Yaroslavl Regions, Krasnotedar Territory, and other parts of Russia (as well as some foreign subjects) became GGE’s customers,’ the newspaper states.

‘What the two companies did was asking a customer to open an account in any bank and use it to transfer some money into GGE’s clearing account. The latter was opened in Yekaterinburg-based Bank24.ru. Following which, the customer was granted access to the UTG-Account system that allowed for the money transfers and recalls. Next, the money got accumulated in the account of Nevis-registered offshore Livingston Investment and, after the closing of business at Forex, it was supposed to go back to the customers’ accounts. The law-enforcement agencies claim that the profit resulting from the market transactions was officially shared among the investor (who got 70%), Alexei Kalinichenko (who got 24%), and Bank24.ru, the intermediary (which was given 6%),’ says Kommersant.

Bank24.ru is currently a member of Life Group.