Vladimir Semin was sentenced to 7 years
Former first deputy chairman of the board of Gazbank Vladimir Semin sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud on an especially large scale. This verdict was handed down by the Leninsky District Court of Samara, reported the prosecutor’s office of the Samara region.
“The court found that in 2017, the first deputy director of the board of JSCB Gazbank entered into fictitious loan agreements for the development of the business of organizations that did not conduct actual business activities, for a total amount of about 900 million rubles. He stole the money together with persons unknown to the investigation,” the report says.
Semin was found guilty of committing a crime under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – “fraud, that is, the theft of someone else’s property by deception using one’s official position, committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy, on an especially large scale.” The court sentenced him to seven years’ imprisonment to be served in a general regime correctional colony.
In the fall of the same year, a criminal case against Mikhail Lipovetsky was submitted to the Leninsky District Court. In November 2020, the court found the ex-chairman of the board guilty of abuse of power and sentenced him to one and a half years of suspended imprisonment. The defendant, as stated in the verdict published on the court’s website, fully admitted his guilt. In 2021, after re-examining the case, the court handed down a similar sentence to Mikhail Lipovetsky.
Bank of Russia revoked the license to carry out banking operations with Gazbank in July 2018. The reason is a significant amount of problem assets on the balance sheet. In addition, in the activities of Gazbank, violations of the requirements of Bank of Russia regulations in the field of combating the legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime and the financing of terrorism were established. In September 2018, the Arbitration Court of the Samara Region declared Gazbank bankrupt. The “hole” in the balance sheet of a credit institution on the date of its bankruptcy was almost 5.674 billion rubles.
JSC JSCB Gazbank was registered in Samara in 1993. The bank was founded by a Samara entrepreneur Vladimir Avetisyan, which controls the Volgopromgaz holding (VPG), former deputy of the Samara Provincial Duma Oleg Dyachenko (died on January 16, 2017) and regional Duma deputy Andrei Kislov. According to banki.ru, the list of shareholders of the organization includes Swiss citizens David Gaon (9.93%), Dominique Brazier (7.08%) and Konstantin Antipin (6.12%), Austrian citizen Miklas Barbara (9.61%), British citizen Geoffrey Lawrence Schmidt (7.68%) and others. Representatives of Switzerland acquired shares in the authorized capital of Gazbank in 2016. […] At the beginning of 2019, it became known that the regional Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, on the initiative of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, was investigating a criminal case against the management of Gazbank under Part 1 of Art. 201 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (abuse of power). According to investigators, in 2015–2018, unidentified persons from the management of Gazbank withdrew assets totaling at least 7 billion rubles.
