Czech police have detained internationally wanted Russian banker Ilya Stashevski in the refugee centre in Vysni Lhoty, local judge Cestmir Duda told CTK Czech News Agency today.

Stashevski has come under the suspicion that in 1997 he appropriated 231 million dollars from the manufacturer of the Russian planes MiG. Stashevski was arrested on March 27 and he has been in custody since, Drda said.

He has lodged a complaint against his arrest with the High Court in Olomouc, Central Moravia.

The Russian business daily Kommersant writes that Stashevski is suspected of having embezzled the money the MiGs producer had received from the Russian budget as a support of the planned sale of the fighters to India.

Former prime minister and current opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov is allegedly a witness in the case.

The transaction eventually did not materialise, but people from the firm spent the money on the bonds they deposited in Stashevski’s bank.

The bonds are alleged to have been sold and the money transferred to a fictitious firm abroad, while some of them were handed to the bank.

Stashevski was detained in Russia over the same case in the late 1990s, when he spent 18 months in custody.

Along with him, the director of another bank involved in the transaction and some senior staff of the MiG were in the custody. A former Russian deputy finance minister also came under the suspicion, but all of them were eventually released.

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