Oklahoma County Commissioner Kevin Calvey has requested prayers on Facebook this morning for his brother, Michael Calvey, who has been ordered to jail for two months by a Russian court.
Michael Calvey has been a prominent U.S. investor in Russia for more than 20 years, and he was detained Friday on allegations of fraud, according to the Washington Post.
Founder and senior partner of Barong Vostok Capital Partners, Michael Calvey denied the charges in court. From an Associated Press report:
Prosecutors say Calvey is suspected of embezzling 2.5 billion rubles ($37 million) from Vostochny Bank, where Baring Vostok has a controlling stake.
But Calvey said during his court appearance Saturday that the charges against him are likely connected to an arbitration case that Baring Vostok initiated against some Vostochny Bank shareholders.
Calvey has worked for years in Russia and invested heavily in the country’s technology sector, including in the web search company Yandex.
Kevin Calvey: Mike is ‘the most honest and ethical man I know’
Around 9 a.m. Saturday morning, Kevin Calvey posted on his personal and County Commissioner Facebook pages, saying he is “confident justice will prevail and this misunderstanding will be cleared up.”
Calvey wrote:
Please pray for my brother Mike, the most honest and ethical man I know. Through Jesus, I am confident justice will prevail and this misunderstanding will be cleared up. In 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, St. Paul says, “But He [Jesus] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
I am weak in this situation. Neither I, nor anyone else in America, has any influence in the Russian legal system. But cf. Romans 8:28, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Please keep praying for Mike, his wife and children, our mother, and our whole family.
A message asking Kevin Calvey if he had any other comment was not returned by the publication of this post. He was elected to serve on the Oklahoma County Commission in November after term limits ended his career in the state Legislature.
In 2006 and 2010, Kevin Calvey lost Republican primary elections for Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District. During the 2010 campaign, The Oklahoman wrote about Michael Calvey’s investment firm having “a former director of the Soviet KGB as its adviser.”
According to the Washington Post, Michael Calvey’s company “says it has invested $2.8 billion from North American pension funds and others into companies across the former Soviet Union. Calvey kept investing in Russia even as sanctions, official corruption and the sputtering economy scared away many Western companies.”
For more information on the situation, read Friday’s full Washington Post report by Anton Troianovski.
