Levon Hayrapetyan freed from house arrest

Levon Hayrapetyan, the Russian-Armenian businessman convicted over an oil company’s illicit sale, has been released from his house arrest.

Law enforcement sources have told the news agency TASS that the precautionary measure was replaced by a petition for not leaving the country after the earlier court ruling expired on September 15.

Hayrapetyan had been under house arrest since July 17, 2014.  He was charged with two counts of embezzlement: those of the funds sold by the company Bashneft, and an amount of US $700,000 which he allegedly received from the mother of Igor Izmestev, a former senator of Bashkortostan . 

The Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation did not confirm the charges in the second case, returning the materials for a repeated expert examination. Meantime, the 12 months’ maximum period for house arrest expired.

The probe into the circumstances of the latter proceeding was earlier reported to have been extended until November.

The businessman is accused for involvement in the sale of Bashneft company’s shares to the Joint-Stock Financial Corporation Sistema. Basnneft was later returned to the state in the wake of an arbitration proceeding.