Land assets of Mezhtopenergobank can go for a penny
More than 122 hectares are put up for auction in a village near Saratov. They belong to the bankrupt Mezhtopenergobank PJSC: six years ago its license was revoked, the owner fled abroad, and the top manager is on trial for fraud of 800 million rubles.
The Russian Auction House has published an advertisement for the sale of a land plot of 122 hectares. It is located in the Tatishchevsky district, in the Vyazovsky municipality, and is modestly numbered as No. 1 (cadastral number 64:34:052101:25).
Judging by the above extract, it was purchased on May 22, 2017, and four days later it was assigned under an assignment agreement. The land is now privately owned. In both cases, the contracts were accompanied by additional agreements. Moreover, now the site is subject to restrictions in accordance with Part 1. Art. 56 of the Land Code of the Russian Federation.
Permitted type of use of the site – for the placement of houses of individual residential development. The cadastral value is more than 226 million rubles. At the time of the start of trading on November 1, the initial price of the lot was 50.6 million rubles, until January 13, the lot will be traded at 64.8% of it. The downward step of the auction is 4.46 million rubles. The cut-off price is just over 6 million rubles.
Note that Vyazovka is one of the most picturesque villages near Saratov. It is surrounded by forests, next to it is the Vyazovsky century-old oak forest, the Vyazovsky black alder forest, the arboretum, as well as the Gubarevsky estate of the nobles of the Shakhmatovs with fragments of plantings of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Saratov is 42 km away.
The site is put up for sale as the property of the debtor. In the attached draft contracts of sale and purchase, the seller and assignor are the bankrupt PJSC Mezhtopenergobank.
The bank was established in 1994 and one of its main activities (81% of the loan portfolio) was lending to housing construction in Moscow and the Moscow region. The bank also owned its own real estate, in particular, a cement plant under construction near Voronezh, a hotel in the Ivanovo region, and so on.
At the same time, the bank was repeatedly criticized for its ties with the authorities of the Tver region. In particular, the journalist of the Tver weekly Caravan, Marina Gavrishenko, put forward a version about the closeness of Andrei Epishin, speaker of the Legislative Assembly of the Tver region, and through him Dmitry Zelenin, the governor of the region, and the chairman of the bank, its actual owner Yuri Shutov, with whom they are one graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology for a year. According to the journalist, thanks to this, the bank was able to invest in the construction of cement and waste incineration plants in the region, and Epirshin was able to “knock out” land for construction. Moreover, local residents were against the construction of the plant.
The bank actively worked with enterprises of the rocket and space industry, however, it was criticized for this. In 2012, in the TV program “Man and Law”, Dmitry Bakanov, at that time the head of the Satellite System “Gonets” company, said that the Federal Space Agency opened a deposit in this bank, which placed money aimed at developing the country’s space industry. Moreover, the choice of this particular bank was allegedly due to the fact that the head of the agency was a relative of someone from his leadership.
Recall that not so long ago a company fled to Saratov, implicated in the withdrawal of funds from Fundservicebank, once the backbone bank of Roscosmos.
In 2017, the Central Bank revoked the license from Mezhtopenergobank, considering that it “placed funds in low-quality assets, including in the construction and investment sectors, and inadequately assessed the credit risks it takes.”
In addition, the bank provided loans to companies that did not conduct real business activities and did not comply with anti-money laundering legislation. The Central Bank twice reacted to such work of a financial institution, including by limiting the attraction of deposits from the population.
– However, the managers and owners of the bank “did not take effective measures to normalize its activities.” Moreover, their actions showed signs of dishonest behavior, expressed in the withdrawal of assets with damage to the interests of creditors, the regulator stated, emphasizing that due to the low quality of assets and insufficient cash flow, the bank was unable to fulfill obligations to creditors.
In 2018, the Moscow Arbitration Court declared the bank bankrupt, launching bankruptcy proceedings. The assets of Mezhtopenergobank at that time amounted to more than 20 billion rubles, and its liabilities – more than 30 billion rubles.
In the same year, it became known about the arrest of one of the bank’s deputy directors, Igor Grabovoi, on suspicion of embezzling 800 million rubles. Last year, the process of this criminal case started.
And in July 2020, the DIA applied to arbitration with a statement on bringing to subsidiary liability the persons who controlled Mezhtopenergobank in the amount of 11.9 billion rubles. The defendants were the chairman of the board and the actual owner Yuri Shutov, as well as the beneficiaries Igor Grabovoy, Evgeny Astakhov, Alexander Astankov, Igor Menshenin, Igor Perminov, Konstantin Kotelnikov, Marina Rudakova-Fisenko (formerly Nemtsova), T. A. Savelieva, Evgenia Kopeikina, Alexander Zabelin.
Yury Shutov moved to Israel a few months before the revocation of his license, and now he has been put on the international wanted list. Meanwhile, three years ago he was suspected of having links with the ex-head of Rosnano, Anatoly Chubais, and the former leader of the Open Government, Mikhail Abyzov. Chubais now also lives abroad, and Mikhail Abyzov is in jail.
Applications for the auction on the land plot are accepted until February 19.