Jailed Russian businessman Nikolai Doroshenko will remain in Preah Sihanouk Provincial Prison indefinitely after a protest was lodged against the Appeal Court’s decision to grant him bail.
Displeased with the decision on Monday to grant the 54-year-old Mr. Doroshenko bail, Appeal Court prosecutor general Ouk Savuth on Wednesday ensured that his time behind bars would be extended, according to his deputy, Heam Rith.
“The prosecutor general lodged an appeal,” Mr. Rith said. “We are not satisfied with the Appeal Court’s decision.”
Mr. Savuth declined to comment. The bail request will now be forwarded to the Supreme Court, which is obliged to hold a hearing within 15 days of receipt.
Mr. Doroshenko was arrested by military police at his family’s Snake House restaurant in Sihanoukville on March 25 after twice failing to appear before the Preah Sihanouk Provincial Court to answer to fraud charges resulting from accusations leveled against him by his business-partner-cum-rival, Sergei Polonsky.
Lawyers for Mr. Polonsky—a 42-year-old former billionaire wanted in Russia on multimillion-dollar embezzlement charges—claim Mr. Doroshenko forged signatures on fake documents to steal $10 million that a client had poured into their joint Sea Snake Investment Group.
Mr. Doroshenko’s son, Ostap, who is a captain in the provincial immigration police force, alleged in an April 20 statement that Mr. Polonsky had paid $250,000 in bribes to have his father locked up.
Contacted Wednesday, the younger Doroshenko said he could not understand why his father, a longtime resident and Cambodian citizen, had not been released.
“This is a question I ask all the time: why?” he said. “My father is a citizen; he has his whole life here. He is not going to run.”
Nach Try, a lawyer for Mr. Doroshenko, declined to comment on the appeal.
When Mr. Doroshenko was granted bail on Monday, the Appeal Court said it would confiscate his passports, landholdings and an undisclosed amount of cash as surety.
Contacted Wednesday, Kaspars Cekotins, a lawyer for Mr. Polonsky, claimed that he had previously applied for a restraining order on the sale of Mr. Doroshenko’s properties—some of which Mr. Polonsky lays claims to—and found that they were no longer listed in his name.
“The thing is, Nikolai has no property,” Mr. Cekotins said. “I have seen the land titles and he transferred it all to his son, the police officer.”
A year and a half ago, Mr. Polonsky was sitting in Phnom Penh’s minimum-security PJ prison awaiting deportation to Russia, following his arrest on Koh Rong island off the coast of Sihanoukville at the request of Moscow.
After three months in prison, however, Mr. Polonsky was freed by the Appeal Court, which denied Russia’s request for his extradition, a decision that was confirmed in April last year by the Supreme Court.
