As it became known to Kommersant, at the request of the FSB, the former deputy chairman of the North Caucasus Bank, the manager of the Dagestan branch of the Savings Bank of the Russian Federation, Sultan Umakhanov, and former employees of the Makhachkala Express bank associated with him, were arrested in absentia in Moscow. They are charged with embezzlement of funds from Express, in which Mr. Umakhanov held the director’s chair before being appointed to Sberbank. In parallel, the Dagestan police are also investigating fraud in this credit institution. The damage to the bank’s customers is estimated at 10 billion rubles.
The judge of the Lefortovsky District Court of Moscow, Lilya Altynnikova, took about an hour to consider four petitions received from the FSB investigation department. The measure of restraint was chosen for two months from the moment of extradition from abroad or detention on the territory of the Russian Federation.
In addition to Sultan Umakhanov, the investigation petitioned for the detention of the former director and then chairman of the board of the bank, Zaur Magomedov (he is a cousin of Mr. Umakhanov and replaced him as director of Express), the first deputy head of the bank, Raisat Shapiyeva (civil wife of Sultan Umakhanov), as well as businessman Arsen Dzhanatliev. All of them were put on the federal and then international wanted list. After the court decision on the arrest comes into force, the materials will be sent to Interpol.
Three top managers of Express Bank are suspected of misappropriation or embezzlement (part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), Arsen Dzhanatliev is charged with fraud in the field of insurance (part 4 of article 159.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), in both cases we are talking about crimes, committed by an organized group or on a large scale.
As the investigation found out, four defendants were involved in fraud in the bank, which in January 2013 was deprived of a license by the Central Bank, and in April of the same year it was declared bankrupt by the Arbitration Court of Dagestan. The criminal case against ex-employees of the bank was initiated by the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA). Frauds were revealed during the formation of the register of obligations of Express Bank to depositors. In particular, according to the DIA, transactions were recorded that showed signs of the formation of a fictitious debt of the bank to depositors in order to steal the funds of the compulsory deposit insurance fund. These operations, according to the DIA, were carried out mainly in the last days of December 2012 – large fictitious amounts allegedly made to deposits and bank accounts were reflected in the accounting. Since the former management of the bank did not hand over the cash and other primary documents to the representatives of the provisional administration of the Bank of Russia, it was decided not to include the bank’s obligations to individuals for such transactions in the register of insurance payments without conducting a detailed analysis of all the circumstances of their occurrence, including with the involvement of law enforcement agencies. , reported the DIA.
As a result, FSB investigators opened cases on the facts of illegal registration of the acceptance of deposits of individuals for 700 thousand rubles, and employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs – on the facts of illegal withdrawal of cash balances of 36 million rubles from the accounts of bank customers. The damage caused to the bank’s customers was estimated at more than 10 billion rubles, more than 3 billion rubles. lost because of the machinations of the state.
It should be noted that four years after the start of the investigation, representatives of the deceived Express depositors held a press conference in Moscow. They, in particular, said that all 12 offices and 80 ATMs of Express Bank were taken from the bank’s ownership to nominees and leased out on extortionate terms.
Representatives of the defense, contacted by Kommersant, refrained from commenting on the case.