The ex-head of the Norilsk branch of VTB could not take revenge on the inspectors

As it became known to Kommersant, on the first working day of the new year, the Norilsk City Court sent Evgeny Chernyshov, the ex-head of the local branch of VTB 24 Bank, to a colony-settlement. The manager suffered because of his own unleashed service conflict. According to the investigation, at first he “could not establish constructive work” with the leaders who came to check on him and became accused of abuse of power (Article 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Hoping to take revenge on the inspectors, Mr. Chernyshov complained about them to the police, for some reason attaching information about clients’ accounts to the application, and as a result received an additional charge of disclosing bank secrecy (Article 283 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

It was planned to sentence Yevgeny Chernyshov back in 2022, but at the stage of the debate of the parties, the defendant, who was under a written undertaking not to leave and proper behavior, suddenly disappeared. His defense assured the court that the client needed urgent medical care and was forced to go to the hospital, but the Norilsk police operatives accompanying the investigation found the person involved in the criminal case at home, and on December 26 last year, his preventive measure was changed to arrest. The defendant spent the New Year holidays in a pre-trial detention center, but did not come to the first session after them in the Norilsk City Court, but was taken under escort.

As it turned out from the verdict, on one of the charges brought against Mr. Chernyshov – disclosure of bank secrecy – the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution had expired, and the defendant agreed to its termination due to non-rehabilitating circumstances.

At the same time, the judge found him guilty of abuse of power and sentenced him to two years in a colony-settlement.

The appointed term, according to the participants in the process, did not impress the convict, especially since he would have to serve almost within walking distance from Norilsk, where until recently Mr. Chernyshov worked and still lives. Another thing is the civil claim of the representative of PJSC VTB 24 against Evgeny Chernyshov, satisfied by the court. The convict himself and his lawyer promised to challenge the decision, but if the verdict of the city court still stands on appeal, the ex-bank employee will have to pay his former employer 3 million 260 thousand rubles.

35-year-old Mr. Chernyshov, who headed the operational office of VTB Norilsk, ended up in a colony, one might say, because of a conflict with his immediate boss, the head of the Krasnoyarsky regional banking office, Natalya Tabarintseva. The two managers in 2018, as stated in the materials of the investigation, had “personal hostile relations”, and they began to collect dirt on each other. In this confrontation, the regional organization won a convincing victory.

In April 2019, Ms. Tabarintseva issued Order No. 268 on a so-called sudden audit of cash and other valuables that were in the vault of the Norilsk office. A commission from Krasnoyarsk that arrived in the city found all those violations in the household of Mr. Chernyshov, which later formed the basis of his accusation under Art. 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. As it turned out, the Norilsk resident grossly and systematically violated the provisions of the so-called VTB tariff book, which provides for charging a client a commission of 1.5% of the transaction amount when transferring funds and 10% when issuing cash if the funds have been on the account for less than 40 days. The departmental commission, followed by the investigation and the court, established that Mr. Chernyshov “exempted” about a dozen of his fellow businessmen from the duty, who made regular financial transactions through the Norilsk office of the bank. As Yevgeny Chernyshov’s former subordinates explained in court, all debit transactions in the bank went through the Front and Biscuit automated systems, which automatically calculated and removed commission from the client. At the same time, in some cases, the head of the office forced the “person who forms the debit transaction” to manually set the system to the “no commission” mode, thus depriving the bank of the profit due to it in the amount of 3.26 million rubles. The investigation and the court came to the conclusion that the manager was guided by selfish motives, however, it was not possible to prove his possible involvement in the theft of funds, so Mr. Chernyshov was only charged with abuse of power.

Back in the spring of 2019, before the relevant criminal case was initiated, the head of the Norilsk office was removed from his post and fired, but, already in the status of unemployed, Mr. Chernyshov struck back at the Regionals.

At his suggestion, the chief personal manager of the Norilsk office, loyal to the ex-manager, wrote a statement to the main office of VTB in Moscow with a complaint against the regional organization, indicating that Krasnoyarsk bankers allegedly forged documents when issuing loans to individual entrepreneurs, thus receiving illegal income and already caused damage to the bank for 30 million rubles. Accordingly, the “surprise check” began already in Krasnoyarsk, however, according to its results, the complaints of the complainants were found to be unfounded, and the personal manager lost her position following her former leader.

Mr. Chernyshov, meanwhile, did not give up his attempts to get even with the “Krasnoyarsk” and already personally went with a statement to the Norilsk police. In it, he reiterated his claims to the regional office, and backed them up with a hefty bundle of banking agreements concluded by clients of the Norilsk additional office. According to the applicant, all these people could testify to violations in the “Krasnoyarsk” office, but the police were primarily interested in how the documents containing banking secrets ended up in the possession of an unemployed person and not related to the bank. Thus, an additional article of the Criminal Code appeared in the accusation of Yevgeny Chernyshov.

The lawyer Magamed Ismailov, who represented the interests of the injured party in court, called the verdict legal and fair, but refrained from more detailed comments, citing the fact that the parties had not yet received the reasoning part of the judgment.