The verdict of the Khamovnichesky District Court of Moscow, the ex-head of the Russian Trade Bank, Igor Safonov, will go to a general regime colony for 8 years. He was found guilty of embezzling more than 4.6 billion rubles of borrowers’ funds. In addition to Safonov, four more top managers of the bank were involved in the case, but so far only he went to the bunk. The background of the “monetary” trial in our material.
Were yours, became ours
The investigation into the case of the ex-head of the Commercial Bank “Russian Trade Bank” (RTBC) lasted more than 2 years, and found that in April 2018 Safonov entered into an agreement on the purchase of illiquid securities worth more than 2.5 billion rubles by the bank. In addition, the bank issued loans to more than 1.3 billion controlled individual entrepreneurs and acquired the right to claim credit obligations of legal entities – borrowers of the bank to withdraw 816 million rubles from its assets.
These operations did not escape the all-seeing gaze of the Central Bank of Russia. On April 20, 2018, the Central Bank revoked the license from RTBC, due to the fact that the bank’s business model “was of a high-risk nature and was focused on lending to economically connected, as well as technical companies.” In addition, the bank submitted false reports to the Central Bank, hiding signs of bankruptcy. On this occasion, restrictions on attracting deposits were imposed on RTBC three times, but to no avail.
As a result, the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA), at the request of the Central Bank, filed a lawsuit with the Moscow Arbitration Court to declare the Russian Trade Bank bankrupt. On August 15, 2018, the court declared RTBC bankrupt. The Bank has introduced a competitive management procedure.
Origins, RBR and offshore
RTBC declared itself at the end of 1993 as a Special Investment Bank (Spetsinvestbank). In May 1994, he receives a license. Until 1997, the organization was engaged in not very large-scale individual and trust lending to clients. In 2005, the bank entered the deposit insurance system.
Among the founders of RTBC, one can see two companies registered in Cyprus: Odeva Management Limited LLC and Tailles Consultants Limited LLC. Both companies owned 9.66% shares in the capital of RTBC (51 million rubles each). Was it not to withdraw funds from the bank that these two LLCs were introduced as founders?
Actually, Spetsinvestbank became the Russian Trade Bank in 2010 after it was bought by Sergey Ivanov, the president of the Russian Development Bank, which in 2010 was renamed Otkritie. In an interview for the Banki.ru portal, Sergei Ivanov said that they needed a small Spetsinvestbank not as a ready-made business, but as an official banking “shell” for obtaining a license. Since then, RTBC has begun to receive capital from shareholders.
As the portal Pravda.ru reported, Sergey Ivanov was associated with the Canadian company BC Investment LTD with registration in Cyprus. Alexander Klyachin, a well-known functionary of the so-called “greenmail” market, was also associated with the same company and personally with Sergei Ivanov.
Reference
Greenmail: corporate blackmail, the purpose of which is to force the organization or the main shareholders to buy them at an inflated value relative to the current market rate
Just after Ivanov, Igor Safonov became the head of the Russian Trade Bank. Apparently, the ex-banker who got behind bars had “good” teachers. Recall the wording from the court case: “the bank issued loans to more than 1.3 billion controlled individual entrepreneurs.” Were entrepreneurs pressured to “need” to take out loans for the required amounts, creating problems in financial relationships?
How activity turned into “business”
The clouds over the bank began to gather in April 2017 after the publication of the RAEX rating (Expert RA). The rating agency assesses the bank’s rating as “B +”. Literally, this means: “Low level of creditworthiness/financial reliability/financial stability compared to other rating objects in the Russian Federation<…> it is possible to fulfill financial obligations on time and in full, but at the same time, the margin of safety is limited. The ability to meet obligations is vulnerable in the event of a deterioration in the economic environment.”
But this assessment is literally immediately withdrawn by the agency. One of the reasons was the bank’s unprofitability in 2016 due to an increase in the cost of creating reserves. The second reason is the high level of concentration of RTBC’s active operations on objects of large credit risk. Third: the high dependence of the bank on the funds of individuals and individual entrepreneurs.
And in 2018, as already mentioned above, the Central Bank paid attention to this. After depriving RBTK of its license and declaring it bankrupt in September, a criminal case is opened on the fact of embezzlement of the bank’s funds. In May 2019, a criminal case was attached to it on the fact of fraud committed by an organized group or on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
At the end of June 2020, another case is added under articles: 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (appropriation or embezzlement, that is, theft of someone else’s property entrusted to the guilty); and 201 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (abuse of powers by a person performing managerial functions in a commercial or other organization, of his powers contrary to the legitimate interests of this organization and in order to derive benefits and advantages for himself or other persons, or to cause harm to other persons).
White and fluffy?
Before Igor Safonov was sentenced in the Khamovnichesky Court in January 2023, in November 2022, the Moscow Arbitration Court considered the case on the subsidiary liability of the management of Russian Trade Bank. In addition to Igor Safonov, the DIA demanded that four more ex-tops of the bank be involved in it. Among them are ex-chairman of the board Lyudmila Sapegina, ex-members of the board Natalya Martynova and Olga Suchkova (Platitsyna), and former member of the supervisory board of RTBC Alexander Avrutin, who, like Sapegina, was also a co-owner of the bank.
By court ruling, all of the five top managers were involved in lending to “technical” borrowers and acquiring a portfolio of securities at an inflated cost. With their permission, collateral was also removed to secure loans. For many clients, the defendants removed loan debts without actually repaying the debt. The court agreed with the Deposit Assurance Agency (DIA) that the bank suffered damage in the amount of more than 4.9 billion rubles.
But the DIA applied for eight (not counting Safonov) bank executives. In this case, the debt could grow to 7 billion rubles. But in relation to the four defendants, the arbitral tribunal decided that they could not influence the decisions of the bank and could not benefit from unprofitable transactions.
The property of the four perpetrators was arrested, their accounts were also arrested, “except for amounts in the amount of the subsistence minimum for the person himself and his dependents.” There are no comments on the mechanism for reimbursement of funds withdrawn from the bank.
In fact, it turns out that only Igor Safonov answered with freedom for the actions of all five. Supervisor. From him and the demand?