The organizer of the Elita-Center scam on the real estate market, Oleksandr Volkonsky (Shakhov), is facing official charges, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's media liaisons office told Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.
“On September 8, a resolution was issued to charge Shakhov as a defendant in the Elita-Center case,” the ministry said, adding that Shakhov examined the resolution and this means that he will face litigation.
In particular, Shakhov has been accused of creating a criminal organization (Part 1, Article 255 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), appropriating a large amount of property (Part 5, Article 191), committing a crime as part of a criminal group, legalizing illegally received funds (Part 4, Article 28 and Part 3, Article 209), forging documents in a conspiracy by individuals and using deliberately forged documents (Part 2-3, Article 358), as well as forging official documents (Part 1, Article 366).
The requirements of Article 217 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine are currently being fulfilled – fraud victims, their representatives and civil defendants are being familiarized with documents on the criminal case that numbers 297 volumes. The case is to be submitted to the courts in January next year, and the maximum term of punishment for Shakhov is 15 years in prison.
As reported, a large-scale fraud was uncovered on the real estate market in Kyiv early in 2006. About 1,759 citizens were victims of the Elita-Center Group, the representatives of which took money from the public as payment for housing that was not built. The total sum stolen from the victims was about UAH 400 million.
On November 1, 2007, a suspect in the fraud case, a man named Oleksandr Volkonsky (whose real name turned out to be Oleksandr Shakhov, born in Russia in 1971) was detained in Switzerland. He was extradited from Switzerland to Ukraine on October 9, 2008.
