The Supreme Court of Dagestan has upheld the sentence - six years of standard regime penal colony and a fine of 400 thousand rubles - for rector of the Moscow International Insurance Institute, the president of Swiss-registered consulting firm Saving World System SA (SWS) Alexander Dyukov. He was found guilty of fraud (Article 159 of the Criminal Code) as a creator of a large financial pyramid, which raised money not only in Russia but also abroad.

According to the charges, in 2000 Alexander Dyukov founded the company SWS in Switzerland. The Moscow representative of SWS offered to people funded programs on the account of life insurance, promising major interest. Investors transferred the money to a Canadian insurance company Income Strategy Group Insurance SA (ISGI), on behalf of which SWS acted, as they supposed. Investigators believe it actually went into the pocket of Mr. Dyukov, to the Swiss accounts of the firm with a consonant name of Income Strategy Group, Inc. (ISG, Inc.) created in New York City. According to the indictment, residents of Dagestan and Chechnya only have invested in the company more than $ 1.5 million. Meanwhile SWS operated in all regions of Russia and allegedly has collected about $ 10 billion.

In the testimony of Mr. Dyukov, stated in court, there were many loud statements. In particular, he argued that in the summer of 1993 he was allegedly invited in "one of the state structures in the building between the Lubyanka and the Old Square in Moscow." Acting in the interests of the state, employees of this organization allegedly offered him to penetrate the structure of the Austrian company SI Save-Invest, which by then was a leader in consulting services on finance and insurance in Europe and led an aggressive policy of seizing the Russian market. Mr. Dyukov told the court that he had agreed and after two years of cooperation with the SI came out on top-level of management.

According to the testimony of Mr. Dyukov, in summer 2000 he once again was invited to the same organization, where Chairman of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Arkady Volsky was present and reportedly offered him to create a company in Switzerland similar to SI - in order to displace the latter from the Russian market. As Mr. Dyukov told in the court, already in September the joint stock company SWS was established.

However, the court did not accept the version of the defendant and ruled that the evidence presented in the court completely disproved it. The court found proven the fact that Alexander Dyukov was the founder of the corporation ISG Inc.; although the defendant denied that fact and claimed that he had had no relationship to the activities of this company. When the court awarded the sentence it took into consideration the fact that the defendant had two young children dependent, and was awarded the Order of Courage for assisting in the protection of socio-economic rights of veterans and disabled of the MIA of RF and the dagger with symbols MIA inscribed.

Protection of the main defendant did not challenge the sentence unlike the victims who considered the sentence too lenient. "The repeated lengthy proceeding would only aggravate the situation of Mr. Dyukov", Attorney Mariana Abdullayeva said. At the same time, says the lawyer, it’s not a complete failure for her client. In Voronezh, the investigation of a similar criminal case against Mr. Dyukova is going on. If the investigation finds no evidence of crime in the actions of the defendant, in the opinion of attorney, that may be grounds for overturning a verdict rendered in Dagestan.