TALLINN, Sep 19, BNS - A court in Tallinn on Thursday authorized the arrest of Marko Rudi, leading consultant with the auditing firm Ernst & Young Baltic, on the basis of a request for legal assistance from the United States.
Estonian authorities detained Rudi in Tallinn on Wednesday acting on a request from Interpol Washington, spokesperson for the chief prosecutor's office Gerrit Maesalu told BNS.
The court will rule about Rudi's possible extradition after receiving the materials of an extradition request from the United States, Maesalu said.
US authorities are suspecting Rudi of four offenses.
The final decision about Rudi's extradition must be made by the Estonian government.
The Estonian weekly Eesti Ekspress said in September 2007 that authorities in the United States were associating two Estonians with embezzlement of funds meant for the reconstruction of Iraq.
Marko Rudi, who currently works as a leading consultant with the auditing company Ernst & Young Baltic, and Jan Jogis-Laats, who heads the news desk of the daily Eesti Paevaleht, are believed to have misdirected around 86 million kroons' worth of Iraqi aid monies, the paper said.
It said that in legal terms the two were associated with fraud, money laundering, embezzlement and graft. In the framework of a related civil case, a house in North Carolina and two apartments in Florida connected with the Estonians and allegedly purchased for criminal income have been seized.
"This concerns a dispute between companies on which I cannot comment due to the confidentiality clause of my employment contract," Rudi told the newspaper a year ago.
Jogis-Laats said in his explanation printed in the Sept. 27 issue of Eesti Paevaleht that all he knew about his alleged role in the case was what had been printed in an article in a US newspaper. "I have not been asked any questions (either in the role of witness or suspect) by any agency from either side of the ocean," he says.
Eesti Ekspress said the case which the US authorities including the FBI were investigating went back to 2003 when both the Estonians were working in Iraq.
In that year the North Carolina based company Research Triangle International (RTI) won a contract to set up 180 local self-governments in the post-Saddam Iraq. RTI's budget for that project was handled by Rudi.
The weekly said that Rudi together with businessmen Steve Mangano and Houssam Hatoum made several suspect deals.
According to Eesti Ekspress, Jogis-Laats whose acquaintance with Rudi went back several years worked for the Dubai-based company BSH as an accountant. He also was a member of the management of two firms through which BSH bought the house in North Carolina.
(EUR 1 = EEK 15.65)
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