The Basmanny District Court of Moscow has arrested Adam Arsamakov, ex-vice president of the Moscow Industrial Bank, in absentia in a case of embezzlement on an especially large scale.
A criminal case has been initiated against him under part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, a correspondent reports. MorningNews with reference to “Kommersant”.
We are talking about issuing loans to dubious organizations for a hundred billion rubles.
The security forces believe that the debtor firms were under the control of the top management of MInBank. The money was given to companies that did not conduct financial and economic activities.
In 2019, the Central Bank took MInBank for reorganization. As the regulator wrote, this decision was made due to the fact that the Moscow Industrial Bank cannot overcome the financial difficulties that it has experienced over the past few years.
The Central Bank indicates that the bank’s problems are related to investments in inefficient construction and industrial projects, as well as real estate transactions.
“As a result, a significant part of the bank’s assets lost liquidity and ceased to generate income. The recognition of the impairment of such assets led to a sharp decrease in the Bank’s capital and violation of the limit values of mandatory ratios,” the regulator said in a statement.
Almost the entire leadership lost their posts. Of the 104 doubtful borrowers of the bank, 51 firms ceased to be served in it.
By the way, the embezzlement case was opened while investigating another fraud case. Then it was about the salaries of relatives of top managers of the bank, who worked formally.
In August 2020, the Moscow Arbitration Court satisfied the claim of the Bank of Russia to recover a total of 198 billion rubles from the former owners and top managers of MInBank
This was a record amount of damages ever recovered from the former owners of a credit institution in Russia. The arrest of the Arsamakovs’ property within the framework of the arbitration process was motivated by the Central Bank by the fact that the defendants carried out a “mass withdrawal of property” in the period six months before the introduction of the temporary administration in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and after this event.
In April last year, the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District upheld the decisions on the recovery of the entire amount and the security seizure of property in force.
The investigators failed to interrogate Adam Arsamakov, he fled abroad. After his arrest in absentia, his name appeared in the Interpol database.
The first fraud case was initiated in 2019 by the Investigative Committee of Russia. It spoke about the payment of salaries to numerous relatives of the former top managers of this credit institution, who in fact were listed there only formally.
Recall that in 2019, the Moscow Industrial Bank ranked thirty-third in terms of assets among Russian banks – the Bank’s assets amounted to 320.5 billion rubles as of January 1 of this year. The financial institution served a large number of clients from among individuals and legal entities, including small and medium-sized enterprises, budgetary and public organizations in many regions of the country.
Now MinBank is being prepared for transfer to Promsvyazbank, the backbone bank of the defense industry. MInBank has a large portfolio of industrial loans and is represented in the regions.