Ex-banker Fedorov rested before his arrest
The ex-presidency of the MBFI was taken into custody in the case of embezzlement. As it became known to Kommersant, the Basmanny District Court of Moscow arrested the former and. about. Chairman of the Board of the International Bank for Finance and Investments (IBFI), which collapsed six years ago, Mikhail Fedorov. According to investigators, a few days before the license was revoked from the bank, its former top manager issued deliberately bad loans to individuals and legal entities for almost 350 million rubles. According to Kommersant’s information, law enforcement officers also had questions for the ex-chairman of the IBFI Vladimir Sakharov, but last year the banker died.
Petitioning in court for the election of the most severe measure of restraint for Mikhail Fedorov, the investigator noted that there were all grounds for this. In particular, according to the representative of the Investigative Committee of Russia (TFR), remaining at large, the accused can hide, obstruct the investigation, threaten witnesses, and also hide the money stolen from the bank. In addition, the court was provided with information that after the license was revoked from the credit institution, the bank “has taken measures to destroy all primary documentation”. True, whether the accused directly had anything to do with it remained unclear. It also followed from the materials submitted by the investigation to the court that, being in the status of a suspect, Mikhail Fedorov fled from the investigation and on December 29, 2022 was put on the wanted list.
In turn, the accused himself told the court that he did not intend to commit any illegal actions listed by the representative of the ICR, adding that he also did not hide from the investigation. According to Mr. Fedorov, who after the collapse of the bank became the general director of Het-Trick LLC, engaged in the sale of drinks, he went abroad before the New Year, having previously notified the investigator by phone. The ex-banker who returned to Russia was detained on January 16. As a result, considering the information and documents presented by the investigation regarding Mikhail Fedorov to be “persuasive”, judge Yevgenia Nikolaeva sent him to a pre-trial detention center until March 16, 2023.
It should be noted that the criminal case on especially large embezzlement (part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) from the IBFI of the TFR has been investigating for almost six years. The reason was the appeal to the law enforcement agencies of the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA). However, it was only at the end of December last year that the charges were filed. By that time, one of the top managers involved in the case, the former chairman of the board, Vladimir Sakharov, had died. According to Kommersant, at the moment the only defendant is Mikhail Fedorov.
It follows from the materials of the case that from April 11 to April 27 (on this day the license was revoked from the bank) 2016, he acted as chairman of the board of the IBFI. During this period, Mr. Fedorov, as established by the investigators, entered into several loan agreements at once with firms that allegedly did not conduct real financial and economic activities. In total, four LLCs received almost 90 million rubles at their disposal. Another almost 252 million rubles. at the same time, the bank issued to individuals in the form of “knowingly non-performing loans.” At the same time, according to Kommersant, fictitious consumables of cash orders for issuing loans to individuals were at the disposal of the investigation. As a result, at the time of the collapse, the MBFI owed almost 520 million rubles to creditors.
However, Mr. Fedorov, according to Kommersant’s information, does not admit his guilt in the incriminated acts. According to him, the money was issued to real borrowers, and the signing of loan agreements with them was preceded by the work of the bank’s specialized departments. The ex-banker’s defense was unavailable for comment.
It should be noted that since April 2019, the DIA has been trying to recover through arbitration from Vladimir Sakharov (due to his death, the proceedings against him were terminated on February 16, 2022) and Mikhail Fedorov for the damage inflicted by them in the amount of about 940 million rubles. Now only Mr. Fedorov remains in the case as a defendant, from whom the DIA expects to receive 346 million rubles.
