Russian officials have launched a criminal case against prominent economist Sergey Aleksashenko. Maybe

On the evening of August 23, the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets and the news agency Interfax reported that former Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergey Aleksashenko is being investigated for smuggling illegal contraband: he allegedly tried to leave the country with several rare Soviet medals. Aleksashenko and officials at two Moscow airports where the incident could have occurred say they don’t know anything about a potential criminal case. Meduza examines what we know about this strange story.

On August 23, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that police are investigating Sergey Aleksashenko, a former deputy finance minister and former deputy chairman of Russia’s Central Bank. Citing the press office of Domodedovo airport’s customs service, the newspaper says 57-year-old Aleksashenko was detained for trying to smuggle several Soviet medals onto a flight to the United States. Before leaving Moscow, customs officers supposedly stopped Aleksashenko, after he walked through the “green corridor,” without declaring any luggage.

Moskovsky Komsomolets says an inspection of his bags revealed seven rare Soviet medals, and Aleksashenko reportedly told officials that the cultural valuables belonged to his personal collection, and he was returning them to his permanent residence in the U.S., after acquiring them in Moscow and Kiev. But Aleksashenko didn’t have the necessary paperwork to remove these objects from Russia, customs officers apparently told Moskovsky Komsomolets.

After confiscating the items, officials released Aleksashenko, who boarded his plane and flew to the United States. An expert examination of the medals revealed their total value to be 760,000 rubles (almost $13,000), the newspaper reports, claiming that Aleksashenko tried to leave Russia with two Orders of Glory, two Orders of the Red Banner, and several copies of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. Moskovsky Komsomolets says police have charged Aleksashenko with attempting to smuggle cultural valuables, which carries a maximum punishment of seven years in prison and fines as high as 1 million rubles ($17,000).

The newspaper story includes video footage that shows customs officials displaying the Soviet medals apparently seized from Aleksashenko. In the video, the officers remove seven medals from a box and mention an unnamed passenger who flew from Moscow to Washington, D.C., through Munich. Neither the officers’ faces nor any formal documents are visible in the video.

Not long afterwards, the news agency Interfax reported that police launched a criminal case against the former deputy finance minister on August 23. The news agency credited the scoop to unnamed sources.

Customs officials have refused to verify any criminal charges against Aleksashenko. Alexander Berzan, the head of customs at Domodedovo airport, said he has no information about Aleksashenko’s supposed detention. “We didn’t release such information. Maybe someone else detained [him],” Berzan proposed. The airport’s customs office said the same thing to Meduza, denying that it supplied the information to Moskovsky Komsomolets. “We don’t know where they got this,” a spokesperson said, refusing to comment any further.

Aleksashenko claims that he learned about the criminal case from the media. He says he hasn’t been detained, explaining that he left Russia two weeks ago — from Sheremetyevo airport, not Domodedovo. Customs officials at Sheremetyevo told Meduza that they’re not aware of any recent incident involving Aleksashenko and don’t know anything about a criminal case against him. Aleksashenko refused to speak to Meduza, but he told the television station Dozhd that his lawyer is trying to understand the situation.

In the 1990s, Sergey Aleksashenko served as deputy finance minister and deputy chairman of Russia’s Central Bank. Later, he worked in business, acting as director of macroeconomic research at the Higher School of Economics, also leading the Moscow branch of Merrill Lynch. Aleksashenko served on the board of directors at Aeroflot and the United Grain Company, leaving these positions by 2013. The economist claims Russian state officials forbid him from running for reelection on Aeroflot’s board. In October 2013, he left Russia and moved to the United States for a fellowship at Georgetown University.

Aleksashenko has called himself a “refugee,” saying he left Russia because of “serious limitations on his ability to work.” After leaving the country, Aleksashenko was removed from Russia’s Commission for the Coordination of the Open Government, where he served with the former head of Moscow’s New Economic School, Sergey Guriyev, who has also fled Russia. Guriyev says he left the country because he feared reprisals for contributing expertise in the politically controversial Yukos case.

Before and after leaving Russia, Aleksashenko has been known for publicly criticizing officials in Moscow. Together with the murdered opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, Aleksashenko coauthored a white paper cataloguing Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. Aleksashenko wrote the chapter on how Russia’s actions in war-torn eastern Ukraine affect the Russian economy.

This wouldn’t be the first time Russian police have charged a former state official with smuggling cultural valuables. In 2013, customs officials discovered a “suspicious” picture in former deputy prime minister Alfred Koch’s luggage, before a flight to Germany. Koch claims he bought the picture for his wife for at a small price in the late 1990s. Paperwork later revealed that the image was the work of Soviet realist painter Isaak Brodsky, though Koch and his wife had supposedly been told by experts that it was a reproduction. An initial review by officials also showed that the painting was a fake, but in April 2014 police nonetheless launched a criminal case against Koch. Officials then carried out a second expert review, which declared the painting to be authentic. In September 2015, Koch was formally accused of trying to smuggle cultural valuables, and later a warrant was issued for his arrest. In April 2017, reporters learned that Interpol rejected the arrest warrant for Koch, who says the criminal charges are purely political persecution.