A prosperous businessman and former Ukrainian lawmaker wanted for extradition for “financial crimes” was detained late on Tuesday in the ski resort of Courchevel in the French Alps, judicial sources quoted by AFP and Reuters said on Wednesday.

48-year-old Konstantin Dzhevago, the main shareholder of the Ferrexpo company listed on the London Stock Exchange, has been wanted in Kyiv since 2021.

Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andriy Kostin welcomed the arrest, in a statement published on Wednesday, he noted that the businessman is suspected of “organizing the takeover of a commercial bank for large amounts of illegally obtained funds.”

Jevago, whose fortune Forbes now estimates at $1.3 billion, down from $2.3 billion last year because of the war, is suspected of embezzling $113 million from his Finance & Credit Bank, which went bankrupt in 2015.

The businessman was a member of the Ukrainian parliament from 1998 to 2019, both as an independent deputy and in the camp of ex-head of the executive power Yulia Tymoshenko, having been defeated in the parliamentary elections by the newly elected party candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyi. for the position of the country’s president. (Source: Agerpres)