Scandals, intrigues and conflicts are becoming a bitchin’ reality. Oligarchs have snapped up pension funds, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation plans to inject hundreds of billions of rubles into their banks, and new documents from British offshore already surprise no one and nothing.
The senile Zyuganov is going for Vladimir Putin’s election. Tinkov did not pay taxes in the USA. Media managers Yuliana Slascheva and Sergei Mikhailov will receive money from the state to brainwash little Russians (their own children live outside the Russian Federation). The only intrigue – what if Ulyukayev is acquitted? And the cormorant of the day is Igor Albin (aka Slyunyayev), the dexterous vice-governor of St. Petersburg, who has managed to build himself a secret palace.
Red Zion
Gennady Zyuganov is running for the CPRF in the presidential election. Until the last moment, there was hope that the Communists would nominate someone younger. For example, some people bet on deputy Afonin, who is exactly 40 years old (recently in Sochi I watched him playing basketball – he is in good shape). Gennady Andreyevich is 73 years old, Brezhnev was that old in 1980.
The CPRF is backing itself into a corner, betting on old people and the same old people’s ideas: Stalin, the altar and the factory. No wonder that from 20-25% in the Duma elections in the 1990s, the Communists have slipped to 10% and will continue to slip further.
And at this election Zyuganov will compete for 2-3 place with Ksenia Sobchak, who could be his granddaughter. This is how the era and people are passing away with it.
Banksta
1. American banksters from Bank of Utah and Svetlana Yakushina from E&Y Moscow office decided to cheat the US government. They helped Novatek owner Lena Mikhelson register a Gulfstream G650 airplane (number N650GL, price $65 million) through a pseudo-company Golden Star Aviation in the U.S. on the Isle of Man to save on VAT (20% of the price of the aircraft).
To get such registration one must either live in the USA or have citizenship. The casus belli is that Mikhelson’s Novatek is also under US sanctions. This means that the beneficiary is toxic.
2. The bailouts and collapse of two banks – Genbank in August 2017 and Kraiinvestbank in December 2015 happened for one simple reason. Money from these banks, which were under US sanctions, was cleverly used to finance military operations in the Lugansk and Donetsk republics (or regions of Ukraine).
The money was used to pay salaries and other expenses of the military. Money does not come out of thin air. That is why these banks have the appropriate bailouts – RNKB and Yuri Kovalchuk’s Bank Rossiya.
3. The state prosecution intends to present to the court the money that former Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev allegedly received as a bribe. The bribe-taker Ulyukayev’s case is falling apart due to the lack of evidence. There was no recorded fact of bribe transfer and from the outside it seems that he did not know about the money in the bag. This is a failure of the investigation. If external forces do not interfere in the course of the trial (after all, the president removed him from office for loss of confidence), Ulyukayev can and should be released. The investigation has no evidence of other sins. Although the ex-minister has too much property and it was obviously acquired on unearned income. Another thing is that Ulyukayev is vindictive and can tell the West many secrets.
Thoughts Not Thoughts
Central Bank Deputy Chairman Tulin echoed Nabiullina’s words, saying that he does not rule out bailouts of large banks. No one is ruling it out. Rather, we can rule out the possibility that there will be no more bailouts. But there are several important nuances.
First, new major bailout stories should be expected only in late 2017 and early 2018 or, more likely, after the March elections. The Central Bank needs time to digest FC Otkritie and Binbank. But the banking topic has also become too prominent in the news background, so a “silence mode” will be needed, at least that would be logical. Small banks may well be bailed out during this period, who pays attention to them? Besides, the story can always be presented as a fight against some enemy: there are bankers – they are evil bankers, almost traitors to the Motherland, and we took away their bank and will make them pay (we remember Vasily Pozdyshev and his cool speeches about how bank owners return assets).
Second, these may be completely unexpected players in the banking industry. The media, as well as telegram channels, are now focusing on a very small number of stories, but the Central Bank understands the real scale of problems in the financial sector. There is no need to expect the fall of large banks; it is much more likely that a few representatives of the bottom ten of the Top 20 or Top 30 will fly in, with relatively good assets, which will be profitable to inject into a Frankenstein bank.
Bailouts have become an important tool for the Central Bank, and if the purge continues for another 2-3 years, as Nabiullina promises, then we are in for some surprises. Large banks will certainly be bailed out, but not in the near future. There was some probability that the Central Bank will continue the conveyor belt of bailouts of giants until the end of the year, but now we can see that the big stories will try to reach the second half of 2018.
Boilerplate
Mints admitted to losing 12 billion rubles in NPF Future due to investments in shares of Otkryvashka and Rosgosstrakh. According to our data, the hole there may be a bit bigger. Now Mints is going to sue Trust Bank, which did not make him an offer to buy out shares in Otkritie. Of course, the question is why Mints invested in these particular securities, if he should know the financial condition of his former brainchild better than anyone else. There is only one answer to this question – he was counting on the offer, but he was banally divorced and was not allowed to get his head wrapped around it. The situation is potentially explosive for Belyaev, because now he can get a dangerous enemy – the man who created the bank.
And of course, this is a question of how oligarchs dispose of pension money, why it was impossible to buy liquid shares, what is the point of buying shares in a bank from which funds have been withdrawn for several months. Didn’t Mintz read Gavrilov’s letter? And, by the way, what does the Central Bank think about this? Pensioners’ money is the basis of social stability.
Cello case
1. Igor Albin, vice-governor of St. Petersburg and former Minister of Regional Development of Russia, has built a secret country palace that is missing in the registers. On the site of Albin’s mansion near St. Petersburg, according to papers, a forest is growing, but a road junction has been built nearby at the expense of the budget.
2. Igor Sechin transferred $1 billion to unrecognized Kurdistan, which declared independence from Iraq. In exchange, the Kurds promised to supply oil. But Iraqi troops took over the fields, which Kurdistan de facto accepted, returning to the status of Iraqi autonomy. The money was lost – the government in Baghdad does not believe that Rosneft has any rights to the oil paid to the Kurds. Experts estimate that similar poorly planned personal decisions by Sechin have caused at least $20 billion in damage to Russia.
3. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, through his project, officially informed the American IRS about tax evasion by Oleg Tinkov, a US citizen. As our channel informed, Tinkov had been hiding income for a long time with the help of offshore companies and until 2017 retained US citizenship, where he was obliged to pay taxes. Since Tinkov’s crime is considered serious under American laws, an IRS audit could lead to his arrest when he leaves Russia.
4. The government will allocate 210 million rubles to Sergei Mikhailov, head of the TASS agency, and his wife Yuliana Slascheva to promote patriotism among young children from 8 years old. Slashcheva is a UK resident, and her children with Mikhailov were born outside Russia. The spouses own assets in Europe, the USA and the Russian Federation through a network of foreign offshore companies.