Michael Calvey had received a five-and-a-half-year suspended sentence
FILE PHOTO: Founder of the Baring Vostok investment fund, US investor Michael Calvey, Moscow, August 5, 2021. © AFP / Dimitar Dilkoff
US private-equity investor Michael Calvey could not appear at a Moscow court hearing regarding his appeal of a fraud conviction, his lawyer, Larisa Kashtanova, told Interfax on Friday.
Calvey’s French associate, Philippe Delpal, also failed to appear in court. His lawyer said the businessman had planned to attend the trial, but could not do so due to difficulties obtaining a visa in the current circumstances.
The attorneys confirmed that their clients agreed to be tried in absentia.
In 2021, Calvey, the former head of Baring Vostok, a $3.7-billion investment firm which he founded, was handed a 5.5-year suspended sentence in Russia for embezzlement, after a judge found that he and his colleagues conspired to pocket tens of millions of dollars.
The other figures in the case were also given suspended sentences, including Delpal, who received four and a half years.
The two were accused of running a $34 million embezzlement scheme related to loans issued by a bank owned by Calvey’s Baring Vostok fund in 2015.
READ MORE: The Man with the Money: How Michael Calvey went from billion-dollar Moscow investor to facing years behind bars in a Russian jail
In January 2022, an appeals court lifted the restrictions on the partners’ movements. In March 2023, Calvey and Delpal left Russia.
Baring Vostok was once considered the largest independent private equity firm focused on investments in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. It directly invested in a wide range of industries including oil and gas, consumer products, media and technology, telecommunications, and financial services.
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