{"id":49125,"date":"2021-09-09T09:41:54","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T06:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=49125"},"modified":"2025-09-02T11:06:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T08:06:06","slug":"court-orders-alfa-bank-and-telegram-open-network-investor-to-pay-126-5-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/court-orders-alfa-bank-and-telegram-open-network-investor-to-pay-126-5-million\/","title":{"rendered":"Court orders Alfa-Bank and Telegram Open Network investor to pay $126.5 million"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Gagarinsky Court in Moscow granted the Prosecutor General’s Office’s claim to recover $126.5 million from former Open Government Coordination Minister Mikhail Abyzov and Alfa-Bank linked to investments in the Telegram Open Network project (TON). About this, \u0441\u043e\u043e\u0431\u0449\u0430\u0435\u0442<\/a> \u0422\u0410\u0421\u0421 \u0441\u043e \u0441\u0441\u044b\u043b\u043a\u043e\u0439 \u043d\u0430 \u043f\u0440\u0435\u0441\u0441-\u0441\u043b\u0443\u0436\u0431\u0443 \u0441\u0443\u0434\u0430.<\/p>\n

The court recovered $104.5 million from Alfa-Bank and $22 million from Abyzov.<\/p>\n

According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, Abyzov placed in Alfa-Bank $126.5 million obtained through corrupt means. He invested this money in the Telegram messenger’s TON blockchain platform and transferred it to Alfa-Bank when the project closed.<\/p>\n

Out of this amount, the bank appropriated $104.5 million for its own use. Media reports suggested that this was done to cover debts of Abyzov-owned company E4. Abyzov directed $22 million to accounts controlled by individuals under his influence, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office.<\/p>\n

In court, Abyzov and his lawyer insisted that these individuals have no relation to the former minister. Alfa-Bank said that they did not understand “the essence of the claims”. Both Abyzov and the bank intend to appeal the court’s decision.<\/p>\n

Abyzov was detained in 2019. He was charged with fraud and the creation of a criminal group. According to investigators, the former minister and his accomplices embezzled 4 billion rubles and moved them abroad.<\/p>\n

Separately, criminal cases were opened against Abyzov for money laundering on a particularly large scale and illegal entrepreneurial activity. In the latter, in 2020 a court, at the Prosecutor General’s Office’s suit, recovered 32 billion rubles from the former official.<\/p>\n

As reported, in two rounds of a closed ICO in February and March 2018, TON raised $1.7 billion in the US and abroad.<\/p>\n

Details of Abyzov’s investments in the project emerged from court documents published in the proceedings between TON and [simple_tooltip content=\u2019\u041a\u043e\u043c\u0438\u0441\u0441\u0438\u044f \u043f\u043e \u0446\u0435\u043d\u043d\u044b\u043c \u0431\u0443\u043c\u0430\u0433\u0430\u043c \u0438 \u0431\u0438\u0440\u0436\u0430\u043c \u0421\u0428\u0410\u2019]SEC[\/simple_tooltip]. The Commission asserted that he invested $15 million through the offshore Batios Holdings Limited.<\/p>\n

In April 2020, Pavel Durov announced that the launch would not take place. He offered investors either to receive 72% of the funds immediately, or 110% by April 30, 2021.<\/p>\n

Follow ForkLog news on Telegram: ForkLog Feed<\/a> \u2014 the full feed of news, ForkLog<\/a> \u2014 the most important news, infographics and opinions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Gagarinsky Court in Moscow granted the Prosecutor General’s Office’s claim to recover $126.5 million from former Open Government Coordination Minister Mikhail Abyzov and Alfa-Bank related to investments in the Telegram Open Network project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1162,1593,27,1422],"class_list":["post-49125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-court-cases","tag-prosecutor-generals-office","tag-russia","tag-toncoin"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"27","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49127,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49125\/revisions\/49127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}