Russian Businessman Prigozhin Accuses FBI Of Fraudulent Schemes To Capture Him

Russian Businessman Prigozhin Accuses FBI of Fraudulent Schemes to Capture Him

Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin has accused the FBI of using fraudulent schemes in a bid to capture him and sent a letter to the agency's head, Christopher Wray, demanding that the US security service remove the offer to reward anyone for information leading to his arrest

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th March, 2021) Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin has accused the FBI of using fraudulent schemes in a bid to capture him and sent a letter to the agency's head, Christopher Wray, demanding that the US security service remove the offer to reward anyone for information leading to his arrest.

In late February, the FBI published a search notice related to Russian citizens, including Prigozhin, whom the US government accused of meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. The FBI also offered a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to his arrest. On Monday, the businessman filed a report to the Russian Investigative Committee on being persecuted by the FBI.

"It is obvious that the FBI distorts the facts and uses fraudulent schemes. It is a funny situation. Fraudsters are fraudulently trying to accuse me, a crystal clear person, of fraud. But they do it so awkwardly that 'a guilty mind betrays itself,'" Prigozhin said, as cited by the press service for his company, Concord, on Wednesday.

According to the letter sent by Prigozhin to Wray on Tuesday, the US agency is offering a monetary reward for information about the businessman out of despair, as Interpol last year officially recognized the charges against him as politically motivated rather than criminal.

"The monetary award for information leading to my capture and arrest is a violation of international human rights principles and Russian law," the businessman said in the letter, a copy of which was posted by Concord's press service.

Prigozhin added that the FBI's cash offer reminds "a modern day letter of marque," which has been illegal under international law since the 1856 Paris Declaration.

Additionally, in a Russian-language wanted list, the FBI misstated its own indictment against the businessman by translating the word "defraud" as "moshennichestvo" (fraud), as "the Russian word refers only to property crimes, where the victim is defrauded out of money or other property," the letter noted.

"Obviously, in the indictment brought by ... [US Special Counsel Robert] Mueller in which I am accused of a single count of 'Conspiracy to Defraud the United States' I am not accused of defrauding the United States out of money or other property, so the translation into Russian is clearly scandalously incorrect," Prigozhin said in the letter.

Last March, US prosecutors dropped their case against Concord over the allegations of its role in meddling in the 2016 US election because it risked exposing law enforcement techniques and threatens US security, as was mentioned in the court documents. The company, in turn, filed a $50-billion lawsuit against Washington over the illegal prosecution triggered by the allegations.