Among the many Russian banks you can find quite interesting ones. Guta-bank can serve as an example. What is interesting in it? A few points that alert a potential client.
Let’s start with a brief reference. JSC “Guta-bank” is a small Moscow bank in terms of assets, focused primarily on servicing the Guta group. Initially, a bank with this name was established in 1991. Due to financial difficulties, on July 16, 2004, Guta-Bank was sold to Vneshtorgbank (now VTB).
An article in Forbes magazine devoted to the activities of Mikhail Kuzovlev (chairman of the bank’s board from 2004 to 2005) describes this period as follows:
“In the summer of 2004, the bank did not collapse just because VTB bought Guta for a symbolic million rubles. Kuzovlev became the chairman of the board of Guta-bank and began negotiations with Petrov and Gushchin on the return of the debts of their firms. “Working at Guta has become a natural continuation of working with bad debts at VTB. The hole in the bank was a gigantic for that time more than $ 100 million.
Here is what Rossiyskaya Gazeta wrote about this: “Yesterday, the Central Bank took an unexpected step, promising to provide a loan, the amount of which is still unknown, to the largest Russian bank with state participation – Vneshtorgbank – to purchase GUTA Bank. She frankly called the allocation of money for the purchase of Guta Bank “an unexpected step.” The amount of the loan became known a little later – 7.5 billion rubles in the then money.
More about this story a little later – it is rather strange in itself, to say the least. In the meantime, admire the history of the issuance of a search engine for the query “Guta-bank”:
If you believe the banknn.ru website, it turns out that Guta-Bank has been liquidated. However, the website of the bank itself says the opposite:
The links are working, the bank is responding to inquiries. That is, the bank has not been liquidated. However, the “bell” is already there.
The next interesting point is that there is no information about the founders of the bank in the official registers. What is strange is that Guta-Bank is a joint-stock company, the data, if not about the beneficiaries, but at least about the holders of the share register, should be public. But no. Silence. The registers contain only data about the head of Guta-Bank:
However, despite the lack of data in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the beneficiaries of the bank are still known. And this is another very interesting point. Probably the most interesting in the whole strange history of the bank.
The structure of the owners of Guta-Bank is very blurred: the bank is owned by a number of companies, including those registered outside the Russian Federation, using circular ownership schemes. The main owners of TEERA JSC (key beneficiaries – Yuri Khlebnikov and Yuri Gushchin, other beneficiaries – Alexei Petrov, Artem Kuznetsov, Alexei Kharin) – 99.92%; minority shareholders – 0.08%. The ultimate beneficiaries are individuals – co-owners of the Guta Group, who were at the origins of the creation of the first OJSC Guta-bank.
And the names of some of these people make clear the fantastic story of the bank’s rescue from bankruptcy in 2004, which we mentioned above. The main role in the allocation of a loan by the Central Bank for the purchase of debts of Guta-Bank belongs to Yuri Gushchin and Alexei Petrov.
And here we are again immersed in history. Here is what Gushchin’s biographical note says: “In 1989 he founded the Guta group, in 1991 – Guta-Bank OJSC, one of whose first clients was MGTS. Gushchin owes much of his success in business to his friendship with Yuri Petrov (father of Alexei Petrov), the first head of the State Investment Corporation (Gosinkor). In 1996, Guta-Bank was bought for public funds and merged into Gosinkor-Holding. In the same year, Gushchin became chairman of the board of directors of the Guta group of companies. Since 2003, he has been the largest shareholder of the United Confectioners holding. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the commercial bank Guta-Bank.
Pay attention – at first “Guta-bank” is an ordinary commercial bank, which in the early nineties bred like mushrooms. But in 1996, the bank was bought for state money by Gosinkor-Holding and, in theory, should become state-owned. But for some reason it remains commercial. What is it like?
And everything is simple – the whole point is who founded the bank in 1991. Yuri Nikolaevich Gushchin at that time was the so-called guild worker, had four previous convictions and strong connections in the criminal world.
Yuri Petrov (now deceased), a friend and first assistant to Yeltsin, who headed the State Investment Company (Gosinkor) after his resignation from the post of head of the Presidential Administration in 1993, was directly involved in promoting Guta-Bank towards large budget funds . This link between crime and the Kremlin, in addition to material confirmation, had a purely related support. For example, the son of Yuri Petrov, Alexei, headed Guta-Bank, and Gushchin’s son-in-law (Artem Kuznetsov) was simultaneously the first deputy chairman of Gosinkor and the chairman of the board of Guta-Bank.
That’s the whole secret of the “economic” miracle, which, by the way, along the way explains the complicated stories with the redemption in 1996 for state funds of “Gosinkor”, and the re-purchase of the same bank in 2004 for the money of the Central Bank. As well as dense flows of money from government agencies that Guta-Bank served in the nineties.
As for another key beneficiary of Guta-Bank, Yuri Valentinovich Khlebnikov, Yuri Gushchin has a long friendship with him: in 1980, Gushchin and Khlebnikov were convicted in the same case of fraud, “causing major damage.” We judge Khlebnikov, unlike Gushchin, only twice – both times for fraud.
So, in 2004, Guta-Bank was saved from bankruptcy for the second time – it was bought out by VTB. But there is another strange story connected with this. At the time of the purchase “for a symbolic million rubles,” the hole in the balance sheet of Guta-Bank was 7.5 billion. In December, VTB 24, created on the basis of Guta, received a loss of exactly 7.5 billion rubles due to the closing of holes left by the previous owners.
But the following story is much more interesting, connected both with VTB and with the Gushchin family.
Apparently, VTB turned out to be an active participant in all the financial schemes of Alexei Kuznetsov, which he inherited from Guta. One way or another, but in December 2007, the body of Oleg Zhukovsky, a top manager of VTB, was found in his own house near Moscow, who, as managing director of the second corporate block, oversaw VTB’s corporate business in the Moscow region. And before that, Oleg Zhukovsky oversaw this business at Guta-Bank. A suicide note was found next to Zhukovsky’s body, but the body itself, with its hands and feet tied, lay at the bottom of an empty pool in the courtyard of the house. A more than strange suicide, but there are no information traces of the disclosure of this sensational case. And in June 2018, under the windows of a house on Leningradskoye Shosse, the body of 19-year-old Yuri Gushchin-Kuznetsov, the grandson of the real owner of Guta-Bank, Yuri Gushchin, and the son of his formal head, Artem Kuznetsov, was found.
A suicide note was also found next to the body, but there was no other reason to suspect the 19-year-old student of suicide. As you can see, the story is far from over. The era of the bloody 90s just faded into the shadows. In the shadow of big state banks and prominent government officials.
What kind of processes took place around Guta-Bank, the Guta group and their beneficiaries Gushchin, Petrov and Kuznetsov in these years is not entirely clear. But the fact that they led to the death of the closest relative of two of them is clearly not an accident.
As for today, finding the financial statements of Guta-Bank turned out to be an impossible task. Here is what rusprofile.ru said about these parameters:
list-org.com, which usually provides extended information about the financial activities of legal entities in Russia, also keeps silent on this issue. The mainfin.ru website has the following information:
As you can see, loans exceed borrowed funds by about 150 million rubles. Which is also not good for the bank.
In addition, we managed to find the following information about the state of affairs in Guta-Bank: “In the last six months, according to the Banki.ru portal, almost all profits have disappeared from Guta-Bank. At the same time, the bank is clearly pumped up with assets, but there is no trace of them.”
This is confirmed by the value of the bank’s assets relative to the loan portfolio.
So the forecast for the near future of Guta-Bank is pessimistic. Moreover, this time there is no one to save him and miracles, as in 1996 and 2004, there is nowhere to wait.