Harrowing details emerge of Sergei Polonsky's Cambodian incarceration

Colleague of former London luxury property developer tells of tasering, a smuggled phone and forced confession in South East Asian nation's jail

Sergei Polonwky is currently languishing in a Moscow jail, having been extradited from Cambodia (Getty)

Dramatic claims have emerged of how a high profile billionaire wanted by the Russian authorities and currently pursuing a London high court action was seized from his home in Cambodia in what his legal team describe as an “extraordinary rendition”.

Sergei Polonsky, an eccentric former London luxury property developer, is best-known in the UK for having been punched by the owner of The Independent, Alexander Lebedev, live on a Russian chatshow.

However, in Russia, he is equally famous for having been pursued by the authorities for an alleged major fraud in Moscow.

Several years ago, he left Russia for Cambodia, which has no extradition treaty with Moscow, and had been living in a compound on the coast, successfully avoiding having to face a Russian criminal prosecution. A judgement in the Cambodian courts had specifically ruled any extradition illegal, leaving him feeling relatively safe from the embezzlement charges he strenuously denies.

However, last May, he and his companions were dramatically seized at gunpoint by Cambodian military on immigration charges and despatched to Moscow, where he arrived three days later and escorted to jail still wearing his Cambodian surf shorts. He has been in a Moscow jail awaiting trial ever since.

In a witness statement lodged in part of his London High Court case and never before reported, one of the colleagues seized with Mr Polonsky in Cambodia at the time gives harrowing details of the rough justice which he claims was handed out to the exile and his friends at the hands of the Cambodians.

Latvian lawyer Kaspars Cekotins describes how Mr Polonsky and his friends were on the billionaire’s luxury yacht near his island, Koh Damlong, when a Cambodian Navy speedboat and two other vessels carrying around 20 local military in camouflage fatigues carrying guns sped alongside.

Boarding the boat, they ordered him to escort them to their Navy base, he claims.

Mr Cekotins says he asked to see a warrant or other paperwork but the military personnel had none. Soon, two more speedboats arrived packed with more armed men. A civilian who appeared to be in charge boarded the yacht and “started screaming” at Polonsky that he and his friends had to go with them immediately or they would force him to, Cekotins claims. The uniformed navy men started brandishing AK-47s at them, so they complied, he says.

As the navy boat sped to the naval base near the city of Sihanoukville, Mr Cekotins noticed they were being filmed – video footage, he claims, that he later heard they were instructed to take to make the men “look like Russian mafia people”..

Mr Polonsky and his friends were locked in cells by a military airport where, at one stage, another prisoner lent Mr Cekotins a mobile phone which he had kept hidden from the guards. Mr Cekotins claims the man passed him the Nokia through a hole he had secretly made in the wall.

Mr Cekotins says he called one of Mr Polonsky’s business associates, Velery Novikov, for help. Mr Novikov arrived in his black Hummer with a lawyer and a business partner of Mr Polonsky.

The lawyer was refused entry at the compound’s gate and told to wait, so he went back to sit in the car in the street outside, according to the witness statement.

An hour later, Mr Cekotins says, about 20 armed military personnel surrounded the vehicle, dragged the three men out, tasered Mr Novikov and forced the men onto the ground, where they handcuffed them before taking them into the cells. Military personnel drove the Hummer into the compound yard.

By that time, Mr Polonsky had already received some rough treatment of his own, according to Mr Cekotins. On the Saturday morning after they were first seized, he was taken away for interview, before returning clearly shaken about 40 minutes later.

Mr Cekotins says Mr Polonsky told his fellow prisoners he had been ordered to sign a document in Khmer. He refused, because he did not understand what it said and wanted his Cambodian lawyer to see it first, but his interviewers handcuffed him very tightly and said they would only be released if he signed. When he still refused, one interviewer held his fists up to the prisoner’s face and threatened to punch him, then threatened to refuse him drinking water until he signed. Eventually he complied, signing the papers with no idea what they said, Mr Cekotins said.

The following morning, 10 men in military clothing arrived at Mr Polonsky’s cell and took him away. “This was the last time I saw Mr Polonsky in Cambodia,” Mr Cekotins said.

A guard later told Mr Cekotins the billionaire was “on his way to Korea”. As it turned out, there was a delay because the Korean airline refused to take him because there was no paperwork. A Cambodian airline agreed to take him the following day and he was sent to Moscow via Vietnam, the witness statement claims.

Mr Polonsky’s arrest was extended in Moscow earlier this week until October 21 and the case was returned to the prosecutors office by the judge to be amended to “eliminate some violations” – amendments seen as a minor victory by the Polonsky legal camp.

In the London High Court action, Mr Polonsky is suing his former lawyer in the UK, Mayfair-based Alexander Dobrovinsky.

Mr Polonsky accuses Mr Dobrovinsky, a celebrity lawyer in Russia, of secretly working against him by duping him into selling his property empire to a purchaser despite Mr Polonsky having expressly told him he did not want to sell to the man in question – claims Mr Dobrovinsky denies.

Mr Cekotins’ witness statement was lodged in a recent London hearing in which Mr Polonsky attempted to have his UK case delayed until after the Moscow criminal trial. He claimed confidential communications between him and his lawyers had been routinely intercepted.

The judge, Mr G Moss QC, refused Mr Polonsky’s request for a stay of the case, partly due to questions over elements of his witnesses’ testimony but said that, on the evidence before him regarding the deportation, there appeared to have been “very serious violations of [Mr Polonsky’s] human rights by the Cambodian authorities.”

The London case is scheduled to start next summer.