The Central Bank and the Federal Tax Service figured out the “restaurant scheme”

The “restaurant scheme” for cashing out money, which was revealed by Rosfinmonitoring, the Central Bank and the Federal Tax Service, worked on the principle of “acquiring break” – this mechanism gave restaurants the opportunity to report to the buyer in the usual way, but in fact the money was withdrawn from supervision through a structure previously associated with online -casino. This follows from the materials of the interdepartmental audit, which was reviewed by RBC. Its authenticity was confirmed by a source familiar with the contents of the documents.

During the audit, it turned out that the key link in the scheme was RNKO RIB (settlement non-banking credit organization Russian Investment Bank), on the basis of which an expensive infrastructure was created – its own processing, data processing centers, loyal banks were found, an extensive network of terminals accepting cash payments.

What is already known about the “restaurant scheme”

RBC wrote about the opening of the scheme in November 2022. It was a series of non-transparent settlements between companies providing processing services and several credit institutions. It could be used both for tax evasion and for money laundering. If usually money for restaurant services is credited directly to the establishment from its bank, and the proceeds are declared in full, then this scheme provided for payments through a terminal that does not belong to the restaurant. It went through a chain of at least three credit institutions, and at the input and output of the cash flow, “two processing companies were artificially included that perform the functions of obfuscating payments,” the Federal Tax Service explained.

Much of the money went to companies that “have nothing to do with the restaurant business, but generate a stable cash flow,” and then non-cash funds were exchanged for uncollected cash. Restaurants were provided with a substitute cash register for unrecorded receipts, and even the banks serving these establishments received distorted data.

The audit materials indicate that the key RNKO RIB scheme did not have its own acquiring, as well as the right to independently connect retail outlets to it.

RIB became an agent of a large acquiring bank to attract new customers, and also performed a key function – settlement. At its stage, there was a change in cash flow and payments that came from restaurants went to various cash providers – car dealerships, tour operators, pharmacies. The network included more than 5,000 terminals for accepting cash payments. Three acquiring banks, several intermediate banks and three settlement banks were included in the scheme. The only thing that united all this with each other was the processing infrastructure, functioning on the same computing power as at one time in RNKO RIB, said a source familiar with the audit materials.

The scheme operated from 2018 to 2022. At its peak, in 2021, its annual turnover is estimated at 100 billion rubles, and the amount of criminal proceeds is 8–10% of this amount, that is, 8–10 billion rubles. per year, the inspectors concluded.

Rosfinmonitoring, together with the Federal Tax Service and the Bank of Russia, participated in identifying a scheme allegedly related to the shadow circulation of funds using processing services, RBC confirmed in financial intelligence. Currently, verification activities are being carried out in relation to the identified scheme, Rosfinmonitoring said, noting that it is considered premature to comment on information about specific participants and organizers of the scheme due to the fact that the verification is ongoing. RBC sent a request to the Bank of Russia and the Federal Tax Service. Earlier, the tax service reported that all participants in the scheme were identified: beneficiaries who evade taxes, and intermediary companies responsible for the technical support of this scheme.

How the “acquiring break” worked

The main idea of ​​the “acquiring break” is that a card transaction in a restaurant has no connection with a real payment in favor of the institution, although for the client it looks like a normal payment, a source familiar with the results of the check explained to RBC. According to him, a restaurant customer can receive a normal check, cashback in his bank and a payment statement with a “restaurant” code MCC (merchant category code). But the real payment will not reach the restaurant’s checking account, he says.

The audit showed that the preparation for shadow operations took place as follows.

The restaurateur wrote to the anonymous manager, whose contacts could be found on Telegram channels and the Internet, and came to the showroom in Moscow, where the scheme was demonstrated.

If he decided to join, they installed the necessary software on his smartphone – “an application with a dashboard in which you could track the state of affairs and manage money online, and an anonymous messenger to contact the organizers.”

After two or three days, specialists came to the restaurant, who set up systems to work with a third-party cash register, installed their own payment terminal and launched the equipment. Once a quarter, they reconfigured the cash registers.

The organizers of the scheme had a “substantial material base” thanks to which they had previously serviced payments of illegal online casinos, including software that “allows you to obfuscate transactions”, applications for users and a data center, regulators say. This made it possible to set up pre-processing (primary processing of payments).

The scheme also involved a “familiar from the online casino” bank, which carried out the calculations and acted as a facilitator (a customer search agent without its own agreement with payment systems).

For the supply of cash, “the pool of payment terminals was consolidated, administrative procedures were launched to create a payment agent, and work was carried out with potential suppliers.”

Fictitious owners were registered, in whose names about 500 cash desks were purchased.

In order not to arouse suspicion, restaurateurs could use not only third-party cash desks, but also their own – due to this, part of the proceeds still fell into the reporting. It was almost impossible to identify third-party cash desks – some customers did not wait for the check, some received it through the cloud of the tax service with the name of an unknown legal entity.

In third-party POS-terminals, all details, including amounts, were falsified in payments, so they “did not cause alertness among credit institutions, since they looked absolutely normal on the outside.”

Then the payment went through the chain “acquiring bank – facilitator bank – settlement bank” and ultimately credited to the accounts of persons whose services were paid through payment terminals (travel agencies, car dealerships, etc.). Cash deposited by customers into the terminal without collection was withdrawn and distributed in favor of cafes and restaurants. This is how the cash flow was replaced from non-cash, left from restaurants, to cash, received from payment terminals.

The first clients were connected to the scheme by the end of 2018, in April 2021, the license was revoked from RNKO RIB.

What is known about RNKO “RIB”

By the time the license was revoked, the company, registered back in 1994, ranked 355th in the Russian banking system. Initially, it was created as a bank, but in December 2009, against the backdrop of the global financial crisis, it was transformed into a non-bank credit organization, the banki.ru portal wrote. By the time the license was revoked, the owners of the bank were Irina Razarenova (52.51%) and Sergey Lezhenin (46.82%).

The decision to stop the work of RNCO “RIB” was made by the Central Bank after it was repeatedly subjected to measures for violating laws on the regulation of banking activities. In particular, the Central Bank reported violations of anti-money laundering requirements. “RNKO RIB specialized in conducting non-transparent operations aimed at ensuring settlements between individuals and illegal online casinos and bookmakers,” the regulator emphasized.

By June, the Moscow Arbitration Court decided to liquidate the company. Claims against RNKO RIB were filed by 916 creditors for 731 million rubles, the court accepted the claims for 647 million rubles. All of them were satisfied at the expense of the company’s property.

RBC sent a request to Irina Razarenova.

What can threaten the participants of the scheme

After the license was revoked, “the scheme had to be hurriedly transferred to other credit institutions,” says a source familiar with the audit. So that they do not face the revocation of the license, “a decision was made to create duplicate chains based on a completely independent banking infrastructure.”

“Each chain had its own acquiring bank, its own facilitating bank, its own settlement bank. It was decided to separate the functions of the facilitating bank and the settlement bank to reduce risks and complicate the tracking of transactions. The only thing that connected all the chains with each other was a single preprocessing, ”the source of RBC describes the scheme.

Alexei Voylukov, vice president of the Association of Banks of Russia, says that this scheme did not use “any special holes in the business, since the equipment was replaced with the consent and desire of customers.”

“The scheme is completely illegal, and the participants who used it were well aware of this, but the desire for an easier way to increase the profitability of their business prevailed over the fear of punishment,” he said.

The President of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers, Igor Bukharov, believes that the volume of the “restaurant scheme” has become too high relative to the turnover of the restaurant market and could not but attract attention. “This is a gigantic amount that would be impossible not to notice,” Bukharov explains. Sergey Mironov, the founder of the Meat & Fish restaurant chain, agrees that the estimate of the amount of money fraud for the restaurant market is high.

The turnover of the Russian public catering market in 2021 was estimated by Rosstat at 1.9 trillion rubles, in 2022 it grew by 4.7% and reached a volume of 2.3 trillion rubles. Based on official statistics, the share of the “restaurant scheme” in 2021 was a little more than 5% of the total market. However, as Mironov explains, the public catering market also includes the revenue of canteens, catering and small players in the non-stationary trade market, which simply could not participate in this scheme.

“The normal part of the restaurant market has already headed for whitewashing as soon as conditions for this appeared, such as zero VAT, but further progress requires new steps from the state, in particular, streamlining the food supply market,” Mironov told RBC.

The scheme is about evading tax payments with the legalization of criminally acquired funds, Dmitry Gorbunov, partner at the law firm Rustam Kurmaev and Partners, believes. According to him, the most severe scenario for the participants in the scheme is the initiation of a criminal case under Art. 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (organization of a criminal community or participation in it). “Given the complexity of the described scheme, in this situation, maximum terms can be assigned – up to 20 years in prison,” he adds. The scheme is technically complex, which “is both a sign of the high qualification of the organizers, and makes it vulnerable at the same time, since non-cash payments are easier to trace,” concludes Gorbunov.