Michael Calvey

Michael Calvey (born October 3, 1967) is an American businessman and was one of Russia's most prominent foreign investors. His controversial Russian criminal conviction on embezzlement and the subsequent nullification of the case was widely publicized in Russia and the world.

Calvey was a co-founder of Baring Vostok, an independent private equity firm focused on investments in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

In February 2019, Calvey and five colleagues were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the theft of 2.5 billion rubles from Vostochny Bank on the order of "hardliner" judge Artur Karpov. In August 2021, after nearly two years under house arrest, Calvey was found guilty of misappropriation and given a 5.5-year suspended sentence by a Moscow court. The conviction was vacated in April 2024.

Calvey left Russia, disinvested after the invasion of Ukraine, and is currently the Chairman of Baring Ventures, a global private equity firm.

Biography

Calvey was born in 1967 in Wisconsin and grew up in Oklahoma. His elder brother Kevin Calvey is an Oklahoma attorney and Republican politician.

Calvey has Bachelor of Business degree from the University of Oklahoma, and Master of Finance degree from the London School of Economics. According to Calvey, he planned to go into politics and become Governor of Oklahoma someday, but instead ended up on Wall Street after completing his studies.

Calvey worked on mergers and acquisitions at Salomon Brothers, before taking a position in energy project finance, focusing on countries of the former Soviet Union at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (ERBD). In a 2019 interview, Calvey said that his interest in Eastern Europe was influenced by the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Calvey noted that the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt took place just a week before he was supposed to start working in Russia. The coup occurred while he was on holiday, climbing the Matterhorn in the Alps and when he returned three days later, pictures of the coup inspired his move. Calvey moved to Moscow in 1994 to set up Baring Vostok, which later discovered early-stage start-ups, including future tech companies like search and mobility pioneer Yandex and digital bank Tinkoff Bank. Calvey is fluent in Russian.

Baring Vostok Capital Partners

Calvey co-founded Baring Vostok in 1994, with the firm becoming known for making early-stage investments in Russian companies largely from the tech and consumer-facing sectors. As of 2019, Baring Vostok launched 6 funds totaling $3.7 billion. By 2021, the firm has reportedly invested almost $3 billion in 80 companies, including some of Russia’s most valuable technology companies such as Tinkoff Bank, Ozon, FGI Wireless ( Beeline), CTC Media, Avito.ru, 1C Company, Ivi.ru, and CarPrice. In Russia, Baring Vostok was best knows for its investment in Yandex: the fund returned over $1 billion from the initial purchase of 35% share in 2000 for $5.28 million.

The New York Times described Calvey as a longstanding proponent of investment opportunities in Russia. Anatoly Chubais, a former Russian Deputy Prime Minister and a key figure in Russia’s post-Soviet market reforms, credited Calvey with personally attracting billions of dollars of investment into the country. According to Bloomberg, "Calvey became a legend in the Russian market, in part because of his reputed aversion to any kind of foul play and focus on industries and companies unlikely to attract the attention of Russia’s authorities."

Baring Vostok embezzlement case

Following a merger of Vostochny Bank (owned by Baring Vostok funds) with Uniastrum Bank in 2017, the merged entity (still named Vostochny Bank) was audited by the Russian Central Bank. Vostochny was ordered to make provisions of extra 19.6 billion Roubles by the Russian Central Bank following the audit, which found that 85% of the provisions were caused by actions “resembling asset stripping” by the owners of Uniastrum Bank in the three months prior to the merger with Vostochny.

Calvey was arrested on 14 February 2019, with three other Baring Vostok executives, on suspicion of allegedly embezzling 2.5 billion rubles (US$38 million) from the Russian Vostochny Bank. On 21 February, Russian state prosecutors formally charged him with fraud. The criminal case was initiated on the basis of a statement from Sherzod Yusupov, a minority shareholder of Vostochny Bank. As of February 2019, Calvey's Baring Vostok had a majority stake of 52.5% in Vostochny Bank. Avetisyan has been described as a friend of the son of Nikolai Patrushev, former Director of the FSB and secretary of Putin's Security Council. Calvey was suing Avetisyan in a separate court case in London, and winning, and Calvey maintains the charges against him were trumped up by Avetisyan who used his connections to have Calvey arrested and thus unable to effectively defend himself in the London case. On 22 February 2019, Radio Echo of Moscow interviewed BBC Russian Service correspondent Olga Shamina, who claimed that the case against Calvey is based on two documents described in a BBC Russian Service publication on its website. One is said to be a statement by Vostochny Bank minority shareholder Sherzod Yusupov, the other an assessment by lawyers in Luxembourg commissioned by Artem Avetisyan.

Prior to the charges being launched in Russia, the shareholders of Vostochny Bank had been engaged in an arbitration dispute over terms of the merger agreement between the Vostochny and Uniastrum shareholders. In March 2019, the London Court of International Arbitration ruled that attempts made by Mr. Avetisyan to obtain a further 10% of the bank via the call option violated arbitration agreements.

Calvey claimed the allegations were unfounded and linked the criminal investigation against him to a corporate dispute he had with other shareholders of Vostochny Bank. Later the shareholders entered into a settlement agreement and publicly stated that their shareholder dispute was not related to the criminal investigation. After signing the settlement agreement, Baring Vostok returned 2.5 billion rubles to Vostochny Bank.

Calvey was held in Matrosskaya Tishina ("Seaman's Silence Prison"), the facility notorious for poor conditions and treatment — it is the same prison where lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was detained and died under mysterious circumstances. Likewise, Calvey's case was assigned to Arthur Karpov, the same judge who prosecuted Magnitsky. U.S. government officials under both the Trump and Biden administrations commented publicly that the case was a commercial dispute that shouldn’t be resolved in criminal courts, and that the arrest of Calvey was a major barrier to improving U.S.-Russian business relations.

In April 2019, Calvey was released to a restricted form of house arrest, although a number of colleagues remained in prison. It was reported that Putin had personally taken the case "under his control", though Putin acknowledged "the law is the law" implying he was not in control. House arrest was lifted in December 2020 and replaced with other restrictions.

In August 2021, Calvey was found guilty of misappropriating 2.5 billion rubles by the Meshchansky district court of Moscow. He was sentenced to 5.5 years of probation and did not go to jail. During the term of Calvey's suspended sentence, he was allowed to travel but is required to register monthly with the Federal Penal Enforcement Service of Russia, and was not allowed to change his permanent place of residence without informing Russian authorities. Calvey's colleagues were sentenced to between 42 and 60 months of probation. A couple of weeks after, Michael Calvey and his colleagues appealed the decision.

Observers have called the sentence a victory under the circumstances, with sources including Russia’s business ombudsman Boris Titov saying the decision was an attempt by Russian law enforcement to “save face."

In January 2022 the appellate court lifted the Moscow Meshchansky district court home restriction. From that date, Calvey was allowed to leave Russia and travel abroad.
On 5 April 2024, Calvey’s conviction was vacated and nullified, removing Calvey's status of being a convicted person. In 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine, Calvey hastily disinvested from Russia costing his company billions.

Calvey’s case is discussed in ''Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir from the Front Lines of Russia’s War Against the West'', by former U.S. Ambassador to Russia John J Sullivan, as an example of an unlawful case against a prominent international investor. Sullivan writes: “The Russian Government had arrested the most successful and prominent U.S. business leader and investor in Russia, Michael Calvey, on a phoney charge".

Calvey published a book about the events in Russia, ''Odyssey Moscow: One American's Journey from Russia Optimist to Prisoner of the State'' (2025).

Post-Russia

Calvey is currently the Chairman of Baring Ventures, a global private equity firm. Among other things Calvey is fostering internet startups, elsewhere in the world, employing young tech talent that fled Russia.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Calvey, Michael
1967 births
Living people
Alumni of the London School of Economics
American financial businesspeople