Tops reset “Plus Bank”
The bankruptcy case of IstokKapital LLC, a former counterparty of Plus Bank, which is being considered in the Arbitration Court of the Omsk Region, shed light on the possible fraudulent actions of the former management of this credit institution. A few years after the resignation, top managers filed a lawsuit against the successor of their financial structure, Asia-Pacific Bank (ATB), and will try to recover 1.3 billion rubles from the new owner. According to lawyers, such a statement is illegal and was made possible precisely thanks to the financial schemes implemented in the past.
How the bank turned into a “deposit vacuum cleaner”
As Oktagon.Sibir wrote, IstokKapital, apparently, was one of the links in the chain of gray schemes of former top managers. They were involved in the withdrawal of more than 8 billion rubles through affiliated companies. We are talking about the dubious projects of the bank associated with its leaders. First of all, these are deliberately bad loans for hundreds of millions of dollars issued to firms affiliated with them.
In April 2022, the bankruptcy creditors of IstokCapital filed a claim for 1.3 billion rubles against Quantum Mobile Bank (until March 2021 – Plus Bank) for subsidiary liability as a profit center for the debtor’s obligations. ATB became the defendant because in June of that year it took over Quantum Mobile Bank and became its successor. The register of IstokCapital’s creditors’ claims includes 1.1 billion rubles from the Cypriot company Paploma Holdings Limited and 187.2 million rubles from Julia Kolesnik. As Oktagon.Sibir noted, they are all associated with the ex-management of Plus Bank and participated in a number of schemes with non-performing loans.
The transaction was completed using loans received from Paploma Holdings Limited and another company, whose rights of claim were later acquired by Kolesnik.
In justification of the claim, bankruptcy creditors cite the words of the General Director of IstokCapital Viktor Isaev: he admitted that he was only a nominal director, and his relative was in charge of the affairs of this company Alexander Konopasevichand Marat Nukushevwho joined Plus Bank in 2010. Both were members of the bank’s board of directors from 2012–2017. Nukushev’s wife Tatiana Novikova actively engaged in business, acted as the beneficiary of many enterprises that received bad loans from Plus Bank.
This credit institution at that time was headed by Alexey Parfenov. He became the owner of 18.43 percent of its shares and a member of the board of directors in 2010. In 2011, he rose to managing director, but already in 2012, the OmskRegion news agency downgraded Plus Bank’s financial stability to the fifth, most recent category and called its market strategy a “deposit vacuum cleaner.” According to the agency, at that time the credit institution was forced to maintain liquidity, including through loans provided to it by the owners. In 2017, Parfenov was fired from his post.
Another top manager of Plus Bank, related to the case of IstokKapital, Alexander Konopasevich, became Chairman of the Board of Directors of the company in 2010 and held this position for five years. Previously, he worked at Kazkommertsbank, Eurasian Bank and Alfa-Bank (Kazakhstan). Now in the register of the Federal Bailiff Service, his debt on loan payments is 725 thousand rubles. In 2021, the court declared Konopasevich bankrupt.
Schemes with non-performing loans
Court cases involving Plus Bank and its shareholders revealed a number of projects implemented just at the time when the bank was headed by Konopasevich, Parfenov and Nukushev. All three had many affiliated companies, through which, apparently, the funds of the credit institution were withdrawn. Businesses that received massive loans soon became unable to pay their bills.
For example, System INN LLC in 2013 received 398 million rubles for the construction of a cottage village in the Moscow region from Plus Bank, and then another 50 million dollars from Tsesnabank. According to the SPARK database, the founder of the company was initially Alexei Parfyonov, and in 2011 it was transferred to the adviser to the chairman of the board of Plus Bank, Anastasia Bocharova. In addition, Parfenov, as an individual entrepreneur, acted as a contractor for System TIN with contracts worth 80 million rubles. Later, the court came to the conclusion that the contract was a sham deal, and the results of the “investment” in a company associated with the managing director of the structure that issued the loan to it were the inability of System TIN to pay its bills and claims for 5.9 billion rubles.
Eurasia Food Company LLC also became insolvent. In 2014 and 2015, Plus Bank issued loans to him for a total of 125 million rubles, the obligations for which were never fulfilled. From the moment of its foundation, the same Anastasia Bocharova acted as the founder of the company, and the wife of Alexei Parfyonov was the general director.
Holes in Plus Bank’s budget, formed by non-performing loans, were often extinguished by a shareholder – Tsesnabank – through the sale of problematic portfolios of an Omsk financial institution through a chain of affiliated legal entities. For example, in 2014–2015, he issued $47.9 million to Upgrade Auto Plus LLC, associated with Marat Nukushev, to purchase Plus Bank’s troubled car loan portfolio from Profekspert LLC.
In 2014, a Kazakhstani financial institution issued another $36 million loan to Region-Stroy for the purchase of 100 percent of shares in Ricom-Plus Real Estate, a closed-end mutual investment fund that owned property in Omsk with a market value of RUB 1.4 billion. It is noteworthy that Region-Stroy LLC is affiliated with several top managers of Plus Bank at once. This project is related to Russian Traditions LLC, connected with Nukushev and Parfyonov through their spouses, as well as with the Good Television company, the founder of which is Galina Konopasevich.
In December 2016, Tsesnabank issued KZT 510 million to KA Kapital-Invest LLC for the purchase of cars from Profavto LLC and Trade I LLC, which, in turn, purchased mortgage cars from Plus Bank. Alexander Konopasevich coordinated the divisions of the financial organization for this project. At the same time, until 2019, Alexander Pronyushkin was the sole founder of the company. Information about the case has been published in the public domain, in the materials of which his daughter Elena Parfyonova, concurrently the spouse of Alexei Parfyonov, is indicated as the successor of Pronyushkin.
Plus Bank issued funds, despite the negative conclusions of its own credit risk service. From 2015 to 2019, he replenished the working capital of RK-Trade LLC, an exporter of materials for railway tracks to the CIS countries, by 320 million rubles. To date, 115.3 million rubles have not been returned, the legal entity has been declared insolvent. Nukushev managed companies to which funds were distributed from the bank through a number of legal entities affiliated with his wife, Tatyana Novikova.
But Tsesnabank helped. In particular, in 2017, he increased the authorized capital of his beloved “daughter” from 748.2 million rubles to 4.1 billion rubles (five times), additionally placing shares in the amount of 3.4 billion rubles. At the same time, Tsesnabank itself had a large number of problem loans. By 2018, there were so many of them that the backbone organization faced the risk of revoking the license. After identifying these problems, to save the backbone bank, additional capitalization by the state in the amount of 800 billion tenge of budget funds was required.
Against the backdrop of all these difficulties, the withdrawal of funds from Plus Bank could not go unnoticed by the Kazakh shareholders of the parent organization, Tsesnabank. It is hard to believe that they did not know about such large-scale schemes developed by the top managers of their Russian subsidiary.
During the consideration of the case in the Omsk court, information surfaced about many schemes ten years ago. A group of leaders could use their official position for their own enrichment. If a criminal case is opened, their actions can be qualified as fraud.
The next court hearing is scheduled for February 28.
Konopasevich’s debt scheme
The Central Bank of Russia and Rosfinmonitoring see dubious transactions
The purchase of Kolesnik’s debt from Paritet Consult in 2015 could have been an attempt to hide the names of the ultimate beneficiaries (Konopasevich and Parfenov) and to disguise the affiliation of Paritet Consult and IstokKapital. In this story, the first firm was assigned the role of a financial center, and the second – a loss-making asset. This allowed businessmen to deprive IstokKapital of the ability to pay bills through proxies.
Additional capitalization from Kazakhstan
In August 2010, 9 percent of the shares of Plus Bank PJSC was acquired by Kazakhstan’s Tsesnabank. Later, he increased his share, first to 30.3 percent, and then to 98.9 percent, becoming the main shareholder of the credit institution by 2016. Judging by the official reporting, four months before the first transaction, Alexander Konopasevich and Alexei Parfenov joined the board of directors of Plus Bank. Their appointment preceded a sort of expansion by the Kazakh systemically important bank. At that time, the Tsesna corporation belonged to the son of the former head of the administration of the first president of Kazakhstan, Dauren Zhaksybek, with whom Konopasevich and Parfenov were closely connected long before joining Plus Bank. There are many publications on the network with photographs taken during their joint ascent of Kilimanjaro. In addition, Alexey Parfyonov during the year combined the positions of general manager in the representative office of the Tsesna corporation in Moscow and managing director in Plus Bank.