15 years in prison, fine and hard labor: in Kuwait, the court issued a terrible sentence to a Russian woman

In Kuwait, a court sentenced Russian woman Maria Lazareva to 15 years of imprisonment and hard labor in the case of the appropriation of public funds. Writes about this with the BBC.

Фото: Depositphotos

The court also ordered Lazarev and her business partners to pay a fine of about 7 million dollars. After serving the prison term, she must be deported from the country.

The case of Lazareva caused a wide response, it is actively supported by influential lawyers and human rights activists from Britain and the United States. Lazareva’s release is also sought by the Russian authorities.

Who is Maria Lazareva?

45-year-old Maria Lazareva studied at Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) and at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. She moved to Kuwait 15 years ago. There she headed the local company KGL Investment (KGLI) and became a member of the board of directors of the Port Fund investment fund.

Lazareva said that she always wanted to work in different countries and see the world, therefore, after graduating from Moscow State University, she decided to leave Russia.

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“I studied abroad, worked in the USA, Europe, and other places. When I graduated from Wharton, they posted job openings for graduates. Among them was a job offer in Kuwait,” she said.

As a result, the entrepreneur got a job at KGL, worked there for several years, and then KGLI, which she led, was created.

“Our initial task was to work in Kuwait and other countries, to attract investors to various projects,” said Lazareva.

What is the entrepreneur accused of?

Lazareva was detained in November 2017 of the year with her Kuwaiti partner Said Dashti. They were charged with failure to carry out work to create a port hub. In May 2018, the court sentenced the entrepreneur to 10 years in prison.

However, the arbitral tribunal then ruled that the work had been completed, and the chief witness in the case received a prison sentence for forging documents.

In the spring of 2019, the court decided to drop charges against the Russian woman, but allowed her to be released only on a gigantic bail of 65 million dollars. After the amount of the collateral was reduced to 3,3 million dollars, Lazareva left prison, having spent 472 days in custody. At the same time, litigation continued.

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Lazareva’s official representative and adviser to the head of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Vladimir Sidorov, argued that the real reason for the proceedings was “some kind of showdown” between business structures in Kuwait, to which Lazareva has nothing to do.

The businesswoman herself complained that persecution was organized against her in the local press, where she was called with contempt “that Russian.”

“Competitors control the media, they write lies about me every time. I filed a lawsuit against them so many times, court cases last two or three years, and then they write in small, thin font on some 27th page that they apologize,” lamented Lazareva.

The new verdict of Lazareva and Dashti has already been passed in another case: on charges of embezzlement of funds from the Kuwaiti Port Authority.

Lawyers for Lazareva claim that in February 2019, the money that the court qualified as wasted was returned to investor accounts with approximately one hundred percent profit.

President of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry Vladimir Platonov, who came to Kuwait to support Lazareva, said that the verdict “is surprising because it was based only on the testimony of a person against whom there is a court decision on giving false testimony and forging documents.”

Representatives of the Kuwaiti prosecutor’s office have not yet commented on the verdict.

Who supports the Russian woman?

Russian President Vladimir Putin and the head of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov touched on the topic of the trial of Lazareva at meetings with the emir of Kuwait. Federation Council speaker Valentina Matvienko discussed this issue at a meeting with the chairman of the Kuwait National Council. The founder of the Yeltsin Center and the daughter of the first president of Russia Tatyana Yumasheva also spoke in defense of the Russian woman.

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Concerns about the fate of the entrepreneur were expressed by the son of the 41 president of the United States, Neil Bush, the wife of former British Prime Minister Sheri Blair, former head of the British intelligence service MI-6 John Scarlett, former FBI Director Louis Free, and Hollywood actress Amber Heard.

“The more I immersed myself in this matter, the more I realized that there was real injustice here. Maria graduated from Wharton Business School, and now she has been separated from her four-year-old son for more than a year due to bogus charges. It was clear from the very beginning that they were falsified,” said Neil Bush.

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“The accusations are not supported by evidence. The facts are very convincing. I have been involved in such cases for more than 40 years as a judge, prosecutor and head of the FBI, and I do not see any evidence in this case that would support the charges, let alone a verdict,” noted Louis Free.

Sheri Blair, in turn, raised the issue of the release of Lazareva before the UN Commission on Human Rights.

In the first quarter of 2019, KGL Investment and its Port Fund, controlled by it, spent about 2,5 million dollars on hiring lobbyists from Washington to help free Lazareva. Brian Ballard, one of the most active fundraisers in the campaign of US President Donald Trump, also joined the campaign in defense of the Russians.

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