Help an American investor in building the Russian economy. He was imprisoned on false charge.

The wrong cell in the Moscow detention center around the last place was expected to find Michael Calvi a businessman named Michael Calvy himself after spending 25 years to build a prosperous adventure capital company in Russia that has transformed some start -up companies into international brands.

First, FSB agents, a federal security service, looted his apartment before dawn. Hours later, he was limited to a cell with two other prisoners and a dirty hole in the ground for a toilet.

“The cell is strangled and hot, a repressive smell hanging in the air as if it was from contracts that accumulated human race mixed with indescribable horrors from the toilet piercing area,” Mr. Calvy wrote in a new book called “Odyssey MosCOW”. These are the details of his ordeal, through the Russian court system in a fabricated fraud case in 2019: “Within a few terrifying surreal hours, it has turned from one of the most successful Western businessmen in Russia into a prisoner of the state.”

With President Trump praising the possibility of “major economic development transactions” between the United States and Russia, as he seeks to improve relations with Moscow, the fate of Mr. Calvi stands as a warning story about the important personal and professional risks involved in the practice of business in Russia, especially given the introductory nature of its courts.

Perhaps no western businessman in Russia has no more than Mr. Calvi, 57, who helped formans on the Internet from technical starters like technical companies such as Yandex – A copy of Google, Amazon and Uber rolled to one – or Tinkoff credit systemsOne of the largest digital banks in the world. The company, which was founded by the Vostok Capital Partners, has received enormous returns.

Then he was drowned in Paring Festouk in a bad commercial conflict with suspicious Russian partners who were drawing assets from a bank in a turbulent integration process. Once, Moscow’s empty apartment for Mr. Calvi caught in mysterious circumstances hours before dinner, which includes tense negotiations.

After his company filed a case to a arbitration court in London, the partners persuaded the ministry K from FSB, responsible for internal financial crimes, that the Americans and many partners have made huge fraud as part of a mysterious foreign conspiracy to undermine the financial sector of Russia.

The agents passed in February 2019, and although there was no evidence of violations in court, Mr. Calvi and many partners spent years in prison or under the arrest of the House of Representatives.

“Once FSB participates in a state, they resemble a car with six gears to go forward and nothing in the opposite direction,” Mr. Calvi said in an interview in Switzerland. “They will never run or lose his face.”

His arrest surprised Western investors. “Everyone I knew was incredible, angry and shocking,” said Bernie Sutcher, an American banker with an extended experience in Russia. “It was seen as a direct attack on the idea of ​​investing in the long term in the Russian economy.”

Unusually, dozens of influential Russians defended Mr. Calvy. Among them are Kirill Dimitriev, head of the sovereign wealth fund in Russia and now a The main negotiator To end the Ukrainian war; German Gref, CEO of the largest Bank of Russia; Alexei Koderin, former Finance Minister. The American embassy in Moscow also strongly objected to his arrest.

Mr. Calvy believed that such interventions, along with the investor confidence blow, would decrease the case. But nothing exceeds FSB

President Vladimir F. Putin is to summon the highest Kremlin officials, and ordered them to remove the American businessman from prison, but also to find something illegal by Mr. Calvi, he said at a later time. He said that the Kremlin in a tense time in the United States and Russian relations, could not recognize the arrest of a prominent American businessman with false factions.

He was released from prison two months later, and he was limited to his apartment with an electronic monitoring device linked to an ankle for two years, and he spent a third under the supervision of the court with a curfew at 8 pm. When a cancerous tumor developed in one leg, the court refused to allow it to remove the device, so doctors work without benefit from magnetic resonance imaging

The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian embassy in Washington did not respond to suspension requests about Mr. Calvie’s account. At the time of his conviction, Dmitry Peskov, the presidential spokesman, quoted Mr. Putin as saying that the government could not interfere in the courts.

When he was first arrested, Mr. Calvi was imprisoned in Matrosskaya Tishina prison, near the center of Moscow. It is sometimes called “Kremlin Center” because many prisoners face fees in prominent corruption cases paid by the Kremlin. There were no violent criminals, but no person was acquitted, both, Mr. Calvi wrote.

His colleagues in his colleagues in non -alcoholic elites received him, “Novoseli”, or welcomed him. One of them was a former deputy Minister of Culture. The last general army was. The youngest was the computer hackers, and three of the construction. Do not trust anyone, one of them is fine.

Their cell was 13 feet in 16 feet, somewhat comfortable and comfortable, with a separate TV and toilet. Men shared everything evenly from cleaning business to food supplies from abroad. He devoted his book to cell men 604, and tears when he talks about them. The book will be released on Thursday in Britain and early April in the United States.

Throughout his detention, Mr. Calvi sought to avoid his prostration who saw him annoyed. His reading list included Kafka as a suitable reflection of his fate.

When a public prosecutor summarized the case, for example, she admitted that no one witnessed a crime, then added, “This only proves what is a well -organized criminal group that we deal with.” Mr. Calvi said that the entire courtroom laughed loudly.

Mr. Calvi said that the trial confirmed the control of FSB on the courts, as the closing data were repeated exactly the opening charges. All witnesses of witnesses may have never occurred. “The Russian people, of course, are the main victims of their courts,” he wrote.

In August 2021, Mr. Calvi was convicted Whoever embezzlement of money and granting a suspended penalty for a period of five years. He said that the condemnation of the false false charges is a stigma on all his actions to Russia.

Russia’s epic began in 1991, when Mr. Calvi left only two years of Oklahoma University, to work for his former coach in Wall Street at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It was established to help the previous Soviet bloc to move to the market economy.

It was working to finance energy sector projects. “He tried to camouflage at his age by adopting a dangerous behavior at work,” said Charlie Ryan, his colleague in the room in Moscow, who was considered a young man for the size of deals.

“Life for the expatriate in the nineties of the last century was equal, strange and wonderful parts,” said Mr. Calvy. A hut pizza was considered a sophisticated restaurant to persuade an appointment. A kilo of unpaid caviar has proven an alternative to breakfast.

Mr. Calvey Barning Vostok has been established to build companies that meet the needs of the new middle class. He married a Russian woman named Julia, and he has two sons and daughter, and now they are all young.

He was inside the elite bubble, surrounded by people who are eager to integrate Russia into the global economy. At the time of his trial, Baring Vostok said that in general, he invested more than $ 2.8 billion in 80 companies across the region, making it the largest Western player.

The Russian has learned within the countless hours he spent with the ambitious young entrepreneurs. He said: “It was difficult to spend time with them and do not feel that Russia was a much better place than it was at the time of their grandfather.”

When prominent businessmen were arrested, Mr. Calvi attributed them to their interference in politics. His Russian colleagues considered very dark about the direction of their country.

The repeated red flags that delivered Mr. Putin, the former KGB agent, have ignored control of each major institution to Silovikiand A Russian term includes all security agencies. Not even the illegal annexation of the Crimea in 2014 raised Mr. Calvy.

“Unless I really appreciate it, and I only realize with my arrests, it is the depth of controlling the ruling class of Russia and its influence, which is FSB and the other Siloviki.

He said that the companies of Mr. Calvi flourished even during his imprisonment, and he did not withdraw the plug until after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The hasty investment cost billions of dollars.

It has been with Russia. Although his conviction was canceled under Russian law after the test period ended five years ago, last week, the Moscow Court Change The sentence is under the observation granted to the French defendant in the case to the prison sentence in the absence.

Mr. Calvi expects some American companies to return, although it considers Russia very risky to long -term investments. A peace deal that may lead him to invest in Ukraine. It enhances startups on the Internet elsewhere, as it employs the young technical talent that fled Russia.

He said that the mysterious geopolitical differences between Moscow and Washington mean that any businessman can become a mortgage in chess, adding: “You may hope that you will not recede on his head, but in the end it may happen at any time.”