The detention, personally led by the head of the SVR's Internal Security Department, General Alexander Filatov, took place on August 5 at the Dubai Mall, reported The Insider*.
The former CEO of VEB-Leasing was with his wife, who tried to prevent the detention, but she was roughly pushed aside and knocked to the ground by masked and camouflaged individuals. Solovyov was taken to the Russian embassy in Dubai and sent to Moscow the next day.
Vyacheslav Solovyov was the CEO of VEB-Leasing from 2008 to 2016. In March 2016, Solovyov unexpectedly did not show up for work: it later turned out he went to Switzerland for treatment and did not return. Following this, VEB's management initiated a financial audit of VEB-Leasing, which revealed a loss of 14 billion rubles for 2015.
In 2018, Solovyov and other top managers became involved in a criminal fraud case: they signed contracts "on non-market terms" with companies found to be affiliated with each other. The price of vehicles in the documents was inflated twofold, and the money was siphoned off to offshore accounts.
Russian intelligence services learned of Solovyov's whereabouts a year ago. Negotiations with UAE authorities had been ongoing all this time: they typically refuse to extradite suspects who have fled abroad. As The Insider discovered, the former CEO of VEB-Leasing is also accused of "espionage" (he holds a Maltese passport), which carries a prison sentence of 10 to 20 years.
* Recognized in Russia as a "foreign agent" and "undesirable" organization.