A standoff between police and a St Petersburg ecumenical group is the latest twist in a battle that pits the city against an internationally funded society accused of corrupt practices.
The Society for Open Christianity's (SOC) fight to keep possession of the building at Chernoretsky Pereulok 4-6 has attracted the attention of the Washington-based Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) -- at the same time former SOC members made a series of damning allegations concerning SOC activities.
The CSCE sent an impassioned plea to St Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak last Tuesday, urging him not to evict the SOC from the building on Chernoretsky.
Last Thursday was the deadline set by the St Petersburg arbitration court for the SOC to vacate the building on Chernoretsky.
Police were denied entry to Chernoretsky Pereulok 4-6 last Thursday, members of the Friends of Open Christianity (FOC) said. Sergei Yegorov, the lawyer who represented the SOC during the course of the dispute with the city, said the SOC has abided with the court's order to vacate the building.
"The building is now occupied by the representative office of the Organization of Friends of Open Christianity in St Petersburg (FOC) instead of the Religious Philosophical Society -- Open Christianity (SOC) to which the court's order was directed," Mr Yegorov said.
Mr Yegorov said the FOC had a legal right to occupy the Chernoretsky premises though he produced no documentary evidence to back up his claim.
While the standoff unfolded, allegations of financial mismanagement against the society surfaced.
Ex-SOC member Michael Rundell said the SOC was rapidly running out of money from August 1993 to August 1994 when he was financial director.
Mr Yegorov and Dick Veldwijk, a representative of the Dutch International Council of Friends of Open Christianity (FOC), denied Mr Rundell was ever financial director, although Mr Rundell has provided documentation supporting his claim to have been financial director.
Boris Gusakov, a member of the SOC council in 1992 and a teacher at Government School 138, said the SOC was "a group of corrupt people," and that his school had ended its association with the SOC because of corruption in the society.
SOC's primary school had been affiliated with Government School 138 so children educated there could receive an education according to accepted state qualifications, Mr Rundell said.
"Parents in (sic) the school were being charged for `extra lessons' which in reality did not exist and teachers and administrative staff were being paid partly in cash to avoid taxes being charged," Mr Rundell said.
Mr Rundell, who has a Masters degree in Economics from Oxford University, drew up a rescue package calling for reduced salaries and the renovation of three apartments to be let out to provide a regular income.
He claimed that Inga Ivanova, then the director of the SOC school, reacted negatively to his proposals. He had suggested that she and her husband Konstantin, president of the SOC, receive reduced salaries and that Mrs Ivanova step down as school director.
"By August 1994, all dollars were being taken by Konstantin [Ivanov] so that the accountant could not register them and two sets of accounts were still being kept for the school," he added.
After the arbitration court ruled last October that the original contract between SOC and the city leasing the Chernoretsky building was null and void, the SOC appealed to the international community.
At that time, Mrs Ivanova told a press conference she and two other women staff members had been assaulted by a group of four people, including a customs officer and a tax police officer.
The SOC maintained that city authorities had violated the original contract by demanding back the Chernoretsky premises.
According to the June 1991 lease agreement between the building's owners -- the Lensoviet (then-city council) Property Committee -- and the SOC, the SOC was required to vacate the premises one year after the property committee gave written notice.
Any disputes between the SOC and the owners were to be resolved through the city courts.
CSCE Chairman Christopher Smith wrote to Mr Sobchak last October, calling the city's actions "suppression of religious freedom."
The eviction order was "an appalling abuse of the justice system ...[which]...does not befit a country which is striving to institute the rule of law," the letter, signed by US Representative Smith and fellow Congressmen Tony Hall and Frank Wolf, said.
At the same time, FOC founder Burt Dornbos told the Washington Times that he had told the St Petersburg government they must pay $2 million if the SOC were evicted.
Mr Rundell poured scorn on this pronouncement.
"It would be impossible for the SOC to prove they had spent anything like $2 million on that building," he said last week.
He added that the whole affair had been rather sad.
Mr Rundell said he told Mr Ivanov before he left the SOC in late 1994 that Mrs Ivanova was destroying the SOC.
Former SOC vice president Herman Dianov said the "Ivanovs were running the society as if it was their own house."
FOC officials dismissed the accusations as "lies." Mr Veldwijk said, "We kicked them out because they were harmful to our cause."
The SOC was founded in 1990. The building at Chernoretsky housed a primary school, a teacher training institute, an orthodox church and an orphans' charity fund.