In the bankruptcy case of the scandalous credit consumer cooperative Saratov Savings, a real drama is being played out with subsidiary liability for the builders of the financial pyramid.
Despite the criminal cases, the defendants on trial or on the federal wanted list, and the billions that have flown away, the Saratov arbitration found only one person who can be made subsidiary liable for the loss of shareholders.
Of the 45 persons from whom, in the opinion of the bankruptcy trustee, the money of depositors should be reclaimed, only Victoria Gavrikova remained. So far, she is the only one whose guilt in creating a financial pyramid was recognized by the court.
The other 44 participants in the process of attracting money from the population of the Saratov regional arbitration did not begin to bring to subsidiary liability. The decision was announced on May 16, the full text was made public on the 23rd.
The manager of the bankrupt CPC, Tatyana Murashova, collected a list of subsidiarily responsible persons from the leaders, founders and employees of the cooperative, including accountants and representatives of its branches in neighboring regions, for example, in the Penza region. It was not the first time that the attempt to force the organizers to answer in rubles for the losses of depositors had been made.
CPC “Saratov Savings” has been operating in the Russian Federation since 2011 and in 2017 went to the bottom. In addition to the bankruptcy initiated at the suit of the Central Bank, the cooperative and its authors fell under criminal cases on the creation of a pyramid scheme, the creation of an organized criminal group and deliberate bankruptcy. Damage to shareholders was estimated at 17 billion rubles. It was this amount that the current manager Murashova asked to divide first into 41 functionaries of the cooperative, which came out to about 434.6 million rubles for each individual, then into 45 people.
But the very process of finding out who should answer in rubles for 700 depositors (this was only at the initial stage of the bankruptcy of the cooperative, according to investigators, the number of victims exceeded 2.5 thousand) turned out to be long and difficult.
Firstly, bankruptcy administrators have repeatedly changed. Tatyana Murashova is already the fifth on their list, before her excavations of the financial pyramid were carried out by the following arbitration archaeologists: Mikhail Denisov, Mercury Arnaudov, Stepan Khistnoy and Stanislav Kuznetsov.
Secondly, the number of subsidiarily responsible was constantly changing. Of the entire company of managers, Stanislav Kuznetsov was the first to talk about the subsidy. In 2021, he asked for responsibility for the director of the cooperative Olga Selivanova, the former director Irina Volkova, the former chairman of the board Alexander Subbotin and board member Svyatoslav Petrov. The amount at that time was not yet called, it is determined after the end of the settlement with creditors.
Secondly, the number of responsible persons was constantly changing. The current manager, Tatyana Murashova, even tried to separately recover losses in the total amount of 66.1 million rubles from the earlier bankruptcy managers – Mikhail Denisov and Mercury Arnaudov. In 2021, the court gradually confirmed the grounds for bringing the participants of the cooperative to justice. But according to the consolidated list, which was now sorted out, he left only Victoria Gavrikova from the whole group.
The reasons for this turned out to be very interesting. From the materials of the case it is clear that they wanted to force the defendants in the criminal case on the pyramid to answer for the debts. Of these, only Gavrikova has been sentenced so far. In March 2022, the Central District Court of Khabarovsk sentenced her to 5.5 years probation for creating an organized criminal group and financial pyramid. In October, the Khabarovsk regional court toughened the sentence, replacing the suspended sentence with a real one, Gavrikova was taken into custody in the courtroom. All other defendants are either on trial or put on the federal wanted list.
Proceedings are taking place in Khabarovsk, since, according to the investigation, companies were registered there, through which the money of the shareholders was withdrawn. The materials of the arbitration case also mention several Moscow firms, to which the CCP also provided loans – 10-15 million rubles each, which were not returned later.
Victoria Gavrikova, as is clear from the materials and the arbitration case and the verdict published on the websites of the Khabarovsk courts, was a co-owner of Agio-Konto Consulting Company LLC. This company, registered in Khabarovsk, is believed by both investigators and the bankruptcy trustee to manage all the financial flows of Saratov Savings.
The materials of the arbitration case include persons who, according to the manager, signed loan agreements and allocated considerable amounts to various companies from the accounts of the cooperative. These funds were not returned. So, for the director of the cooperative in the period from 2013 to 2015, Svyatoslav Petrov, they counted 427.8 million rubles of loans not returned to legal entities, for Irina Volkova, who led the cooperative in 2015-2017 – 409.7 million rubles.
The bankruptcy trustee conditionally divides all controlling persons into 2 levels: direct participants in the criminal group who deceived citizens for the sake of profit, and executors of the criminal plan, who did not receive direct benefits and did not fall under investigation, but acted in bad faith and dragged investors into the financial pyramid.
But the court considered that even criminal liability for participation in the creation of a pyramid scheme does not entail subsidiary liability.
“The bankruptcy trustee’s references to the existence of indictments against the said persons, the transfer of materials of criminal cases to the court, cannot be taken into account by the court, since the guilt of the said persons in the commission of the crime and the circumstances of their commission by the court sentences that have entered into legal force have not been established,” – concluded the Saratov arbitration.
It is impossible, the court believes, to refer to the verdict of Gavrikova, since only she was imprisoned according to it. In the event of a guilty verdict for the rest, the case of the subsidiary may be considered on the basis of newly discovered circumstances.
“Currently, there is no proper, sufficient and reliable evidence that the listed persons exercised actual control over the debtor and intentionally caused damage to the debtor and creditors,” the arbitration concludes.
Help “BV”. KPK Saratov Savings LLC was registered in Saratov in April 2010 at 52 Moskovskaya St. From 2011 to 2016, the cooperative reported zero revenue and losses.