As it became known to Kommersant, another trial is ahead of the shadow banker and racing driver Agustin Morales-Escomilla. A native Muscovite, who received an unusual name and surname from relatives with Spanish roots, was sentenced on Tuesday in the capital to 11 years of strict regime for taking 1.6 billion rubles abroad as part of an organized criminal group under the so-called Moldovan scheme through Smartbank controlled by him. Previously, he received seven years in prison for embezzling funds from Taurus Bank, and now materials against him on similar charges with the money of Promregionbank are being prepared for submission to the court. When arrested back in 2017, Mr. Morales-Escomilla denied his guilt, but later told the details of scams both with the withdrawal of funds and the collapse of a number of credit institutions.
The trial in the case of 47-year-old Agustin Morales-Escomilla took Judge Dmitry Neudakhin only a few meetings, as it took place in a special manner, providing for a full admission of guilt without examining evidence and calling witnesses. In fact, at such meetings, everything comes down to a discussion in the debate of the parties of aggravating and mitigating circumstances and the very term of punishment, which, according to the law, cannot exceed two-thirds of the maximum possible. In the case of a Spaniard of Russian origin living in Moscow, it was about charges of managing a structural unit of an organized crime community (Part 1 of Article 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and performing foreign exchange transactions to transfer funds in foreign currency to non-resident accounts using forged documents in an especially large the size of an organized group (part 3 of article 193.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The first article provides from 12 to 20, and the second – from 5 to 10 years in prison, respectively. In the debate of the parties, representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office asked the court to appoint the minimum possible term – 12 years, by “partial addition of punishment”, and the defense could only speak of leniency towards the defendant, relying on his repentance and assistance to the investigation.
As a result, Judge Neudakhin took into account all these factors, appointing citizen Agustin Agustinovich Morales-Escomilla 11 years of strict regime and a fine of 1 million rubles. with restriction of freedom for one year after release.
It is worth noting that this verdict was yet another, but by no means the last of a series of decisions that have taken place and a number of other pending decisions against the leaders and participants of the OPS involved in the withdrawal of about 126 billion rubles. through Moldova. Recall that the investigation considers the wanted organizers of the Moldovan politician Vladimir Plahotniuc and the owner of Moldindconbank SA Veaceslav Platon. According to the investigators, according to the scheme they developed, the withdrawal of money took place in several stages: at the first, a loan agreement was concluded between a Russian company, in which funds intended for sending abroad were accumulated, and a foreign company specially selected for this. The guarantors for it were citizens of Moldova and Russian companies. However, soon this agreement was deliberately broken, and the creditor applied to the Moldovan court with a claim against the debtor and his guarantors. The court urgently granted the claim, sending the writ of execution to Moldindconbank for immediate write-off of funds. At the same time, settlement accounts of companies acting as guarantors for loans were opened in the Russian banks involved in the scheme, to which funds were credited for conversion into foreign currency. The money was transferred to the same Moldindconbank to accounts opened by it in the US and Germany, after which they were arrested on the basis of a Moldovan judicial act. And in the end, the already laundered funds were transferred to banks, mainly in EU countries, to the accounts of the plaintiffs – companies controlled by members of the OPS.
A number of Russian bankers – Oleg Vlasov, Alexander Korkin and others, as Kommersant reported, received sentences from 17 to 19 years in prison for such fraud. Morales-Escomilla also played a certain role in this. Recall that he ended up in a pre-trial detention center back in 2017 on charges of embezzlement or embezzlement of Taurus bank funds. It is interesting that the Russian Spaniard himself with a Moscow residence permit only once briefly was listed as an employee of one credit institution, although he constantly rotated in circles around banking. At the same time, he was known, like a number of his banker friends, by participating in car races – races on his Lamborghini in drag racing with prizes. A few years ago, the Tverskoy Court sentenced him, along with a number of other defendants in the Taurus case, to seven years in prison, dropping the charges of organizing a scam, but recognizing him as one of the shadow owners of the institution. Having not admitted his guilt and having managed to serve most of the term in the capital’s SIZO-4 “Medved”, the underground banker-racer was already preparing to file a petition for parole when he was arrested under a number of articles of the Criminal Code on embezzlement of Promregionbank’s funds.
According to some reports, at that moment, Agustin Morales-Escomilla decided to cooperate with the investigation, revealing, among other things, the details of both the Moldovan scheme and other illegal financial frauds with banks, which in the end all turned out to be bankrupt with huge holes in their assets.
While the case of Promregionbank is being prepared for submission to the court, the racing banker managed to find himself on trial in one of the episodes of the Moldovan scheme – the withdrawal of 1.6 billion rubles to Moldindconbank in the summer of 2013. from Smartbank, where he was also an underground host. “In the course of the investigation, a pre-trial cooperation agreement was concluded with Morales-Escomilla, the obligations under which they have fully fulfilled,” the Prosecutor General’s Office noted on Tuesday.