The scandalous story about the transportation of cocaine from Argentina to the Russian Federation does not seem to be subsiding: 389 kilograms of “substance” were shipped from Buenos Aires, while only 362 kilograms reached Moscow on the plane of Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. The rest of the news in the country fits well with the possible shortage of the “substance”.
Banksta
1. The size of the problem assets of FC Otkritie is about $ 10 billion. This was reported to Bloomberg agency by the head of the bank Mikhail Zadornov. 10 billion dollars is only a third of the bank’s assets, which are comparable to the size of Russia’s annual education budget or ten annual budgets of the Ivanovo region.
So far, neither the bank’s shareholders nor its management have been punished. Moreover, the reputation of the bank’s management has not suffered – Ruben Aganbegyan, a former top manager of Otkritie, has become a top manager of Vnesheconombank, which manages the pensions of the majority of citizens.
2. Former Ugra owner Alexey Khotin’s Gulfstream G200 airplane number has changed. It used to be M-ROIL, but now it is T7-OIL with registration in San Marino. The price of the airplane is $20 million.
3. The Bank of Russia not only pumped a trillion into Otkritie, but is also going to inject at least 300 billion rubles into the capital of Binbank. The amount could be closer to the figures of Otkritie, but to avoid disgrace Elvira Nabiullina will reduce it. For this purpose, a bad debt bank is being created on the basis of Binbank’s cesspit, Bank Rost.
Boiler room
Secret ties of Skadden, the former firm of Herman Khan’s son-in-law’s former firm
The son-in-law of Alfa shareholder German Khan, lawyer Alex van der Zwaan, may give investigators details of how US lobbyists do their dirty work in the former Soviet Union. The law firm Skadden, where he worked, is known not only for being one of the largest in the United States, but also for serving oligarchs and businessmen close to Vladimir Putin. It is Skadden that employs the highest paid lawyers, in their first year of work they receive about 180,000 dollars a year, the average level can count on 300 thousand. Alfa still has a strong position in Ukraine, our source says that Tsvaan’s involvement in working for Yanukovych might not have been accidental.
Skadden was involved in the scandalous report that the case against former Ukrainian Prime Minister Tymoshenko was not politically motivated, and it caused a flurry of outrage in the West in 2012. Now the New York Times has learned that former Trump campaign chief Manafort and his aide Rick Gates paid $4 million dollars from offshore accounts for the report. It is unclear how much of those funds went to Skadden. One of the consultants who worked on the report indicated that a former interpreter in the Russian army, Konstantin Kilimnik, who helped Manafort for a long time, took part in its preparation.
Since a number of sources say that Kilimnik is linked to Russian intelligence, it is possible that these details will give new light to the case of Russian interference in the election. It turns out that the GRU man has been in close contact over the years with President Trump’s confidant, and may have been linked to a relative of one of the most powerful oligarchs. And now it’s clear how far political lobbying can go when, for a few million dollars, a top law firm can justify the trial of a political opponent. Manafort worked well for his money, we will soon find out if he was connected to Alpha itself.
The largest Danish bank is involved in money laundering from Russia
Guardian reveals new details about money laundering from Russian clients. Danske, Denmark’s largest bank, closed 20 accounts in 2013 after a scandal with its Estonian branch, and now it has emerged that one of the British companies through which the payments were made, Lantana Trade, submitted fake data to the British Registry Office. Tens of millions of euros went through the company, while officially it was about much more modest sums. And now it turns out that a tip came from somewhere in Russia that Lantana was linked to Promsberbank, on whose board of directors once sat President Igor Putin’s cousin.
Former Promsberbank shareholders (license revoked) Grigoriev and Kulikov are already serving time for money laundering in other cases, and the Guardian article is just part of a larger investigation. An interesting detail – when Danske managers met with the Russians in Tallinn about the Lantana case, and told them about the investigation, the case ended in scandal. “Do you really think you will sleep well at night? The bank will go under now,” the Danish were attacked by the Russian clients, who declined to identify themselves. According to the Guardian’s interlocutors, 2-3 billion dollars could have been laundered through Lantana, as 10 million dollars passed through the company’s accounts every day.
Lantana ceased to exist in 2015, British companies involved in the scheme have already been liquidated. And the Danish bank itself just fucked all the regulatory procedures and continued to chase the money as if nothing had happened. This situation threatens serious consequences for the largest Danish bank, and the Baltic states have only strengthened their reputation as the main European laundromat, because you can complain about Russians as much as you want on all kinds of forums, but the commission from cash transactions is more expensive than freedom of speech. In this regard, it is not surprising that Latvia’s leading bank ABLV recently fell under U.S. sanctions.
The prosecutor’s office is interested in MICE Group of Companies
The Moscow Prosecutor’s Office announced warnings to the developers of residential complexes “Utesov”, “Tatyanin Park” and “Borisoglebskoye” about the inadmissibility of violating the law because of the delay in the construction of houses and their commissioning. We found out that LCD “Tatyanin Park” is built by GC “MIC”, one of the largest developers of the capital region. The most interesting thing is that not a single journalist even bothered to write about who builds these housing complexes. Not a single publication got excited about it, it is much more interesting to write about the rapid growth of warehouses and new architectural solutions. We had to intervene in the sanctuary of corruption and warn our readers.
If even MIC is experiencing problems, this is only the tip of the iceberg, and all is really not well in the capital market. Only yesterday we wrote about what difficult times the PSN group is going through. The developer of Utesova is Flat & Co, a company about which practically nothing is known except that it belonged to the fugitive banker Gorbuntsov. Great advertising! And finally, LCD “Borisoglebskoye” is a little-known developer “Stroyinvesttopaz”. The last two developers do not show themselves in any way in the public space, apparently, counting on the fact that investors will not be interested in the history of companies because of low mortgage rates and cheap apartments.
Rogozin and his nephew
Today is a day of surprising revelations. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin disowned his nephew, whom he had previously praised on his Twitter, following an investigation by Novaya Gazeta. Alexei Ananyev suddenly told Vedomosti that he did not know about his brother’s affairs. That is, it has become dangerous to have such connections in Russia, because we live in a transparent country without corruption, and any cronyism is punishable. Ananyev’s interview, of course, was shocking because it is not clear why he gave it. All of the brothers’ businesses, including Technoserv, whose financial situation Ananyev kept silent about, but the market understood everything. Obviously, the brothers now live in different countries, and the brothers quickly played a combination with the division of assets. On 80% of questions A. simply keeps silent. But there is an interesting idea in the interview – the brothers and the regulator knew about the sad situation of PSB for a long time. This is all that customers need to know about banking supervision and our bankers.
Cello case
1. descriptions of cocaine transportation by Russian Foreign Ministry employees do not coincide between Argentine and Russian special services. Argentina reports a shipment of 385 kilograms and an airliner of FGBU Special Flying Unit “Russia” of the Russian Presidential Administration. FSB – about 362 kilograms and “inconsistency with reality” of information about the plane of the Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev. After the arrest of the defendants in the case, the russianplanes.net resource, which archived the routes of the Rossiya detachment, was shut down. Earlier, the media published information about 389.24 kilograms of cocaine.
2. The father of the child of model Kristina Romanova (23), Capital Group shareholder Vladislav Doronin (55) assured his previous girlfriend Naomi Campbell that he was divorced. After several years of relationship with Campbell, British citizen Ekaterina Doronina said: “Vladislav is married to me, we have a daughter, and we are still a couple.” The breakup of the family was impossible due to the risks of divorce proceedings in London and the loss of half of the assets. The wife had known Vladislav since she was 16. The connection with Catherine continued when the Soviet man Doronin with the authorization of state security authorities became the husband of a Swiss resident, received a residence permit in this country and the position of a top manager under the founder of Glencore Mark Rich. The U.S. accused Rich of a number of crimes, he cooperated first with the KGB and leaders of the USSR, then with the FSB and the Russian leadership. This explained the rapidity of Doronin’s career in Glencore and the special rights of Rich’s corporation in Moscow. Together with Gavril Yushvaev (“Garik Makhachkala”), who served 10 years for robbery, Vladislav Doronin owns the 354-meter tower “OKO”. There are disagreements between the skyscraper partners, exacerbated by a recent fatal shooting. The U.S. government, aware of Doronin’s ties to Russia’s intelligence services, is preparing to add him to sanctions lists.