Luzhkov and Baturina have recently been noted skipping around Europe in a probable attempt to flee the country, and now it appears that Bank of Moscow President Andrei Borodin may be joining them.

As RIA Novosti reports:

Bank of Moscow President Andrei Borodin has fled Russia after the police were ready to charge him with illegally granting a 13 billion ruble ($444 million) loan to Elena Baturina, wife of former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, sources said on Tuesday.

“Last week the police asked the court to relieve Borodin of his duties after which he was to be charged and a restraint on travel imposed,” a police source said.

A Moscow court rejected the request and Borodin then left Russia, the source said.

Banking sources told RIA Novosti that Borodin, whose duties are being temporarily performed by Bank of Moscow Vice President Sergei Yermolayev, was in London, where former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and his wife Yelena Baturina are thought to be resident. The Bank of Moscow said Borodin was on sick leave.

Investigators raided Premiere Estate, a property company owned by Baturina, in February as part of a probe into misuse of Moscow city funds in connection with the 13 billion ruble loan to her. Police also raided the Bank of Moscow and the homes of some of its directors.

Police think some of the bank’s staff helped embezzle money which ended up in Baturina’s account. The loan granted by Bank of Moscow was allegedly used in a complex series of deals to buy land in Moscow owned by Inteco, Baturina’s construction and real estate firm, at an excessive price, in order to slash the firm’s debts.

Both Inteco and Baturina have consistently denied any impropriety in connection to the deals.

Meanwhile, a fight for control over Bank of Moscow has been going on since February, when Russia’s second largest bank, state-controlled VTB announced a gradual acquisition of Bank of Moscow, the capital’s investment vehicle. The Moscow government sold its stake in the bank to VTB for 103 billion rubles after President Dmitry Medvedev fired Luzhkov last fall.

VTB now owns a 46.48% share in Bank of Moscow and plans to gain a 100% control. Borodin and his business partner Lev Alaluyev hold a 20.3% stake in Bank of Moscow.

Borodin gained a court injunction blocking the acquisition of Goldman Sachs’ 3.88% stake in the bank, which would have increased VTB’s share in Bank of Moscow to a controlling interest.

While there was no talk of a permanent residency visa for Luzhkov, a source told ITAR-TASS, the entry visa was granted on the basis of “reunifying their family.” Shortly after he was fired, Luzhkov sent his teenage daughters to London to study. His wife, billionaire real estate mogul Yelena Baturina, is also currently in London.

According to Kasparov.ru, Baturina’s status as a major investor with significant financial interests in the British economy allow her to hold a special British business visa. Thanks to this visa, she can obtain a residential permit and then make a claim for British citizenship.

The news comes two weeks after Luzhkov failed in an attempt to obtain citizenship in Latvia. He applied shortly before New Year’s, having deposited 200 thousand Lats (about 400 thousand USD) into a Latvian bank account; he reportedly already owned real estate in Jurmala. However, Riga declared the disgraced mayor persona non grata and put him on a blacklist of foreigners.

Media reports later surfaced that Luzhkov was trying to obtain citizenship in Austria.

The ex-mayor himself says that he has no plans to leave Russia “if the motherland itself doesn’t disown me.” According to a source close to the mayor, Luzhkov simply does not want to rely on Russian passport services and decided to obtain one from a country in the Schengen Area.

If he does decide to flee to Britain, Yury Luzhkov would not be the first Russian public figure in trouble with the Kremlin to do so. Oligarch Boris Berezovsky took asylum in London in 2001 after Russian authorities began investigating his business activities. Britain has turned down all three extradition requests to send Berezovsky back to Russia, where he was convicted in absentia of embezzlement and theft in several different criminal suits.

Yury Luzhkov was fired by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on September 28, 2010, as a result of “a loss of confidence.” His decision was preceded by a massive propaganda campaign, in which federal television aired multiple scandalous stories criticizing the mayor and his wife. Medvedev later specified that he fired Luzhkov because of the high level of corruption in Moscow.

“In the concluding days of this past week, a variety of media outlets, including all the federal television channels, actively dispersed negative information about the activities of the mayor and government of Moscow. Moreover, the television and radio stories and newspaper articles were notable for their lack of evidence,” said a press release from the mayor’s office.

As political scientist Georgy Bovt pointed out in a column for Gazeta.ru, many of the main ideas in the media reports came from “Luzhkov. Results,” an opposition report published a year ago by former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov and former Deputy Minister of Energy Vladimir Milov. At the time, the mayor and his wife both sued for defamation, but a Moscow court ruled that only one sentence in the 37-page report had to be reworded.

Nemtsov himself said on Monday that the weekend’s reports constitute “a cinematization of our report. Which is nice.” He added that while the television channels clearly appropriated his and Milov’s writing, “information about Luzhkov’s corrupt activities is far more important than referencing its original source.”

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev also chimed in about Luzhkov on Friday. As the Moscow Times writes:

Luzhkov sparred openly with the Kremlin last week when he backed a highway through the Khimki forest outside Moscow and criticized Medvedev’s decision to suspend construction work following environmentalists’ protests.

Medvedev retorted Friday at a conference in Yaroslavl that he disagreed with Luzhkov’s position and that “officials should either participate in building institutions or join the opposition.”

But the fact that Medvedev is taking such a roundabout way of targeting the Moscow mayor is a sign of political weakness, critics say.

“Medvedev is not behaving like a president,” said Nemtsov. “Instead of issuing an order to fire Luzhkov and investigate his activities within the frame of the president’s declared war against corruption, he’s throwing sand in a sandbox like an offended child.

“Medvedev’s moment of truth has come – either he fires Luzhkov and becomes president, or he’ll be the laughing stock of all of Russia,” says Nemtsov.

Here’s the initial 20-minute report by NTV – which, according to the newspaper Kommersant, was ordered, filmed, and edited in less than 24 hours. The opening narration, interspersed for ironic effect with Luzhkov talking about his honeybee collection, says:

Why does Moscow have the most expensive roads, and why are they constantly under repair? Why was Moscow choked by smoke, but its mayor rescued his bees? How the mayor’s wife become the richest woman in Russia, and how his deputy got a watch that costs more than a million dollars. How the tastiest corners of our capital are divided up, and how those “friends” make a living. Why Moscow civil servants live in such houses, and how bees became more expensive than people. What does it mean to “cover up for one another,” and what is the capital government keeping quiet about?

On top of everything, the newspaper Vedomosti cited a source “close to the Kremlin” on Monday as saying that the issue of Luzhkov’s possible resignation will be resolved by the end of this week.

For more on the scandal:

Medvedev and Putin at odds over Moscow mayor – The Telegraph
NTV and Medvedev Target Luzhkov – The Moscow Times