Isaev flies like a falcon: was the ex-head of the DIA scared of the security forces?

Yury Isaev, who has worked as deputy chairman of the Central Bank for a little less than six months, will leave his post at the beginning of next month. At the Central Bank, he oversaw issues of currency control, countering money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

Isaev has a rather rich biography. He worked in the mass of credit and monetary institutions. The last place of work before the Central Bank was the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA), where he served as general director for ten long years.

DIA is a state organization, it pays insurance compensation to depositors of banks in respect of which an insured event has occurred.

According to Forbes, Isaev is leaving for health reasons and he allegedly “will need long-term treatment.” The correspondent understood what, in fact, could be behind the sudden departure of Isaev from a new position The Moscow Post.

Lawyers in gold

During the time that Isaev was in charge of the DIA, the department managed to disgrace more than once. A wide response was caused by the filing of a complaint by the creditor of Prombusinessbank against the actions of the DIA as a bankruptcy trustee. According to the plaintiff (Avtocenter company), the DIA overestimated the cost of the services of lawyers who were supposed to monitor the repayment of debts by Prombusinessbank.

And this money came from the pockets of the creditors themselves. During the bankruptcy of the bank, more than 1 billion rubles were spent on lawyers’ services. This was reported by Vedomosti.

And the situation is not unique. It happened that the costs of lawyers accounted for half of the entire bankruptcy estate. At the same time, in the situation with Prombiznesbank, the lawyers, according to the plaintiff, sometimes did not actually perform any actions in order to return the debt to creditors.

At the same time, we recall that the DIA generously sponsors the state. Could it be that Isaev simply decided to earn extra money in such a simple way?

Quite a reasonable assumption, given the fact that the court paid attention to the amount of bonuses to lawyers. According to Interfax, in 2019, 6 million rubles, previously paid as a “success fee” to hired lawyers, were recovered from the DIA in favor of MIFTS No. 50 in Moscow as part of the bankruptcy of Holding Credit Bank.

As part of the bankruptcy of Prombusinessbank, creditors took away the Let’s Go! structure. The DIA sold it to the only scandalous Sovcombank that had filed an application at a price two times lower than the market price. Later, Sovcombank sold Let’s Go! his own management and a number of investors. Among them was the head of the daughter structure of the DIA – the bank “Russian Capital” Mikhail Kuzovlev. Is not Isaev’s man?

“Effective” DIA work

If we analyze the work of the company as a whole, then it can hardly be called effective. Previously, The Moscow Post gave a good calculation based on the performance of the company. Journalists came to the conclusion that the effectiveness of the structure under the control of Isaev amounted to a ridiculous 1.6% of the amount of damage caused to the state and people by unscrupulous bankers. Given that any arbitration manager works at the level of 20-25%.

Isaev himself said that in 70% of cases when the DIA files lawsuits, they are futile in terms of receiving money.

In this case, it is not clear why the DIA structure exists and why colossal state injections go into it.

Where does the state corporation’s money go? Photo: https://www.rusprofile.ru

After the scandal with Prombiznesbank, the DIA, through Isaev, announced that it would hire 1.5 thousand of its own lawyers. According to calculations, 4-5 for each case. The average salary of such a specialist is 65-70 thousand rubles. If we calculate the costs, it costs the budget about an additional 1.2-1.4 billion rubles a year.

But if we delve a little into the past of the DIA, we will see even more curious things – for example, in 2015, the DIA asked the Central Bank for a loan of 20 billion rubles, because it had exhausted its own funds. Whence, then, such generous fees to lawyers? By the way, just a month after receiving the funds, the DIA spent 1.9 billion (instead of the originally planned 1 billion) rubles to furnish its office.

I wonder how he oversaw money laundering issues at the Central Bank. If, as in the DIA, it is clear that Nabiullina could have some claims …

We got to the wallets of the population

In 2017, Tatfondbank (TFB) depositors sued the DIA. The fact is that those depositors who, before the arrival of the DIA, re-registered their accounts for other individuals, dividing large deposits into small ones, were simply “saved” by the DIA from their deposits. The department regarded the actions as suspicious. This was reported by “Business Online”.

As a result, when the institution went bankrupt, about 3.9 thousand TFB depositors were left out with demands for payment of 4.4 billion. And did this amount go into the pocket of dealers from the DIA?

Further more. In 2018, depositors who had already received money faced a demand from the DIA to return them. Allegedly, the depositors knew that the bank was “on the verge of a foul” and had no right to earn on their savings. “How could we know this, if on December 2 my son withdrew 659 thousand rubles, and returned it on the 5th?! How could we, ordinary people, know about this?! Then we would not put the money back!” – quotes one of the women who received the demand “Business Online”.

influential circle

All these sophistications allow Isaev to get acquainted with the oligarchs brothers Arkady and Igor Rotenberg with impunity. During his fruitful career, he managed, in the position of first deputy chairman and head, to lead Dynamo, a sports society that is associated with them.

According to rumors, Isaev lobbied their interests in the sale of SMP Bank, and also promised to get rid of problems with the law of the former owners of Mosoblbank for donations to Dynamo. SMP-Bank received a total of 55 billion rubles from the DIA, the money went to reorganize Mosoblbank.

Isaev also worked for a long time under the watchful eye of the current head of Sberbank, German Gref, as Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation. Then about a year in Rusal – associated with Oleg Deripaska, and at the same time an adviser to the first deputy head of the FSB, Vladimir Pronichev. So wherever you look, there are influential people behind Isaev’s back.

Spiteful critics claim that Isaev was allegedly close to the highest echelons of the FSB – to the ex-head of Department “K” Viktor Voronin and his former subordinate, ex-head of the banking department of the FSB Kirill Cherkalin. The latter became famous just for covering bankers with their unscrupulous deeds. In 2019, he got caught and ended up behind bars, Lenta.ru wrote.

According to PASMI (recognized as a foreign agent on the territory of the Russian Federation), Cherkalin allegedly named Deputy Isaev Valery Miroshnikov as his agent from the DIA. Shortly before that, the latter disappeared from the radar – he quit and fled abroad.

Is Isaev going on an indefinite vacation?

It seems that something similar can now happen to Mr. Isaev, who climbed higher and higher, and suddenly, for no reason at all, quit. We can hardly talk about the inefficiency of the latter. After all, how many cases do we know when Elvira Nabiullina keeps very controversial managers near her.

Take, for example, Vladimir Chistyukhin, the deputy head of the Central Bank. During his leadership of the insurance market, about 5 billion state rubles leaked through the Respect company in an unknown direction. This was written by “Kommersant”.

During the proceedings, it turned out that the Central Bank did not even know who the true head of the company was. How was the license issued then? Chistyukhin just shrugged. And he sits. And they even tipped him to Nabiullina’s place.

Isaev at the post in the Central Bank has not even had time to disgrace himself, so his sudden departure can rather be regarded as a flight. Moreover, the flight, apparently, is from the past in the DIA, to which a pile of questions has accumulated during the period of his leadership. The “long-term treatment” referred to by Forbes indirectly confirms the hypothesis.

Taking into account the fact that Nabiullina recently announced the upcoming clearing of the banking sector, and Isaev is a new person for her, incomparable with Chistyukhin in terms of proximity to the head of the Central Bank, he has something to fear.

There is reason to believe that in Russia we will be able to observe Mr. Isaev for a very, very short time, and then he will fly a “falcon” for his former deputy Miroshnikov and that’s it.