A former high-level executive at Finprombank was given a six-year prison term for the theft of 808 million rubles.
The Meshchansky Court in Moscow handed down a six-year prison sentence to Alexander Lavrentyev, formerly the deputy chief of the credit division at the defunct Finprombank (FPB), a shorter term than the eleven years sought by the public prosecutor.
He was determined to be culpable of providing two knowingly unsound loans, adding up to 808 million rubles. The larger of these loans, amounting to $11 million, was secured by Andrey Vdovin, a co-founder of the Azbuka Vkusa supermarket chain and a one-time co-proprietor of the Asia-Pacific Bank (ATB), who has been internationally wanted since 2018.
The legal proceedings against Alexander Lavrentyev, the former deputy head of the FPB credit department, who was charged with large-scale fraudulent activity committed by an organized group (Part 4, Article 160 of the Russian Criminal Code), have been in progress at the Meshchansky Court since the previous November. During the final arguments, the public prosecutor pressed for a very severe punishment for the accused—eleven years of incarceration. However, Judge Elena Karakeshisheva, while acknowledging the defendant’s culpability in the charged offenses, rendered a considerably reduced sentence. Based on information from the Moscow City Court, Alexander Lavrentyev received a sentence of six years in a general security penitentiary.
Alexander Lavrentiev
The Central Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (ICR)'s Unit for Probing Offenses Against State Power and Financial Violations commenced its investigation into the circumstances surrounding the embezzlement of FPB’s resources in November 2017. FPB, previously recognized as one of Russia’s 100 biggest banks by asset value prior to its downfall, had its license revoked in September 2016, with outstanding debts exceeding 31 billion rubles to depositors. Within the scope of this inquiry, a series of criminal suits were initiated against former FPB key executives concerning misappropriation, which were subsequently merged into a unified case.
On February 14, 2023, Alexander Lavrentyev, then serving as the director of the credit department at PJSC Promsvyazbank, was apprehended as a suspect, and on that same day, he was formally accused of two instances of significant embezzlement from FPB.
As previously reported by Kommersant, these records pertain to 2015, when two individuals received deliberately unsound loans totaling 808 million rubles. Neither of these loans was repaid or managed until the bank’s permit was withdrawn, and the more substantial loan, valued at $11 million, was granted to Andrey Vdovin, a co-owner of ATB and one of the creators of the Azbuka Vkusa chain. As a reminder, Mr. Vdovin was himself subjected to an in absentia arrest by Moscow’s Tverskoy Court in 2018 and added to the international list of wanted persons as part of an investigation into the misappropriation of billions from ATB.
Alongside financier Lavrentyev, who was placed in pretrial custody, charges of embezzlement were also brought against FPB co-owners Stanislav Perminov and Anatoly Goncharov, as well as former vice president Anatoly Kalinichenko. Nonetheless, the latter three were tried without their presence, as they had already been placed on Interpol’s wanted list by that time.
Consequently, the proceedings against Alexander Lavrentyev were divided into a separate trial on June 29, 2023, and presented before the court.
According to Kommersant, the accused never owned up to his crime. Throughout the investigation, his lawyers asserted that the actions identified as criminal by the Investigative Committee were performed within the boundaries of his job responsibilities, and given his role at the bank, Alexander Lavrentyev had no bearing on the FPB’s policies regarding loans. The court, for its part, sentenced the banker to jail and affirmed the DIA’s demand for the total sum of the damages.
The partners in crime of the convicted Lavrentyev, who are in hiding overseas, are accused of diverting almost 9 billion rubles from the bank. Investigators say that between 2014 and 2016, FPB senior managers stole this money by dispensing comparable purposely deficient loans to individuals and purchasing 7 billion rubles worth of bonds from Um Finance Limited, a Cypriot entity overseen by the accused individuals.
