By Lauren Crothers
PHNOM PENH
A fugitive Russian billionaire accused of embezzling millions of dollars has been arrested in Cambodia and faces possible deportation, it was reported Saturday.
The Phnom Penh Post and Cambodia Daily said Sergei Polonsky and several associates were apprehended from his yacht on Friday, which was moored off the island of Koh Damlong.
It had been reported that Polonsky - who owns several private islands in the Gulf of Thailand off the coast of Cambodia - was arrested because he was in Cambodia on an expired visa.
Pictures showed him and several other shirtless men being cuffed and taken down a set of stairs on the mainland after the arrests.
Edgars Cekotins, brother of Latvian national Kaspars Cekotins, who is one of Polonsky’s lawyers, told The Anadolu Agency on Saturday that he had been unable to contact his brother, because he did not have a phone where he was being detained.
Edgars Cekotins told the Post on Friday that he had heard “three boats with policemen” pulled up and apprehended those who did not manage to escape.
“They took all the phones, all the Macs, PCs, everything,” he told the Post.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong told AA on Saturday that he had not received any updated information regarding Polonsky’s possible deportation and referred questions to the Ministry of Interior, whose spokesman, Khieu Sopheak, could not be reached.
Polonsky’s exploits on Cambodia’s far islands have been documented on his social media pages, and include the setting up of an underwater museum.
But Russian authorities consider him a fugitive, evading a number of charges related to the embezzlement of millions of dollars that would have gone toward investment projects.
He was arrested twice in 2013—once for allegedly forcing six people to jump off a boat at knifepoint, and again in November of that year on an extradition request from Russia.
The Daily quoted Benson Samay, another of Polonsky’s lawyers, as saying that his visa is valid through Nov. 6 of this year.
