George Urumov says Otkritie gave him $25m to hand out to colleagues (or not) as he liked

We've reported before on the strange case of George Urumov, the Russian trader at Otkritie in London who's alleged to have taken $25m in signing bonuses intended for colleagues and kept almost all of it himself.

Otkritie was said to have intended that George distribute the money to five colleagues in chunks of approximately $5m each. In fact, he gave out $500k, $750k and $1m to three people and kept the rest.

Otkritie is taking Urumov to court in an attempt to reclaim the money. Bloomberg reports today that Urumov has filed a defence saying that the $25m was for him to give to colleagues at his discretion.

Urumov gave some money to his colleagues and fellow Russian bankers Ruslan Pinaev and Sergey Kondratyuk. He says Pinaev was given some money because he recommended Urumov for a job at Otkritie. And Kondratyuk was given some money because he stood to earn less when Urumov and his team joined.