One of Russia’s biggest investors in Crimea is arrested in Moscow

Piotr Nidzelsky became one of Russia’s biggest investors in Crimea after Moscow annexed the peninsula in 2014. On Wednesday, police in Moscow arrested him on charges of large-scale fraud. The details of the case and the nature of the alleged crime are still unreported.

Nidzelsky, who served from 1994 until 2004 as a deputy energy minister in Russia’s federal government, will face up to a decade behind bars. In 2015, Nidzelsky’s Southern Energy Company acquired a majority stake in KrymTETs, Crimea’s largest conventional energy producer.