Soccer Star Kerzhakov Defrauded of $11M - Lawyer

NB: The original version of this story erroneously gave the dollar figures of Kerzhakov's alleged investment and loss as $300,000 and $1 mln, respectively. 

MOSCOW, March 15, 2013

Alexander Kerzhakov

(R-Sport) - Russian soccer player Alexander Kerzhakov has been defrauded of $11 million in an elaborate scheme involving the construction of a ghost oil refinery, his lawyer said Friday.

St. Petersburg police have opened a fraud investigation into the incident, which saw the star forward duped into investing millions of rubles from April 2011 to the fall of 2012, Igor Reshetnikov told the RAPSI news agency.

"No one has been charged, but I hope this will be done in the near future," Reshetnikov said.

The alleged scam began when Kerzhakov met someone claiming to be a businessman from the city of Voronezh during a training camp in the United Arab Emirates, Reshetnikov said.

The 30-year-old striker agreed to plow 100 million rubles ($3.3 mln) into the construction of the refinery after making two visits to what he was told was the site, the lawyer said.

"Without worrying about the details, he agreed ... although he couldn't have been able to say whether an oil derrick was being built there or a residential building," Reshetnikov said.

Kerzhakov gave the go-ahead for the money transfer after getting in touch by telephone with his VIP account manager at Gazprombank, according to Reshetnikov.

Later it transpired that more than 330 million rubles ($11 mln) had vanished from Kerzhakov's account after money transfer documents appeared bearing his forged signature, his lawyer said. The police were called in as Reshetnikov suspected the bank and the fraudster had conspired.

"It's just a hunch, but I think there was a merger between the personal bank manager of my client and the company that received the payments," he said.

"The bank told us that they simply don't believe that such a thing could have happened, so we brought in the law enforcement agencies and a criminal probe was opened."

In a statement later Friday, Gazprombank said only that it would cooperate fully with the investigation.

Financial scams are common in Russia, and Zenit players have fallen victim before.

In 2008, several players including current goalkeeper Vyacheslav Malafeev and striker Pavel Pogrebnyak invested millions into a pyramid scheme organized by a company named Nevsky Prospect.

Kerzhakov is one of the country's top players. He is consistently among the leading goalscorers in the Russian Premier League and has scored 22 times in 70 appearances for his country