Bazhanova Tatyana Vasilyevna

SPOILER: LET IT GO TO THE WIND. NOT ALL OF THEM, THOUGH. DON'T WORRY, THE BANKERS ARE FINE.

1.Dolce vita

In the rainy summer of 2018, the International Bank of St. Petersburg, owned by former senator and retired State Security Colonel, began to have problems. More precisely, the problems, of course, began much earlier, but it was then that they were talked about aloud. And, despite the fact that the bankers tirelessly kept a straight face, handing out interviews and throwing dust in eyes at elite receptions, the dolce vita suddenly ended.

In the photo: A regular of social parties Bazhanova Tatyana Vasilyevna (left).  photo credit: sabaka.ru

In the autumn, the Bank of Russia introduces a moratorium on meeting creditors ' claims and appoints a temporary administration to manage the bank. And on October 31, IBSP had its license revoked.

Then, as usual, the painstaking work of the interim administration to assess the scale of the disaster. The question is not idle, because 18 billion rubles of "physicists" and 22 billion rubles of legal entities, and even some - LSR, Settle group, KVS, are hanging on the accounts in the IBSP... The verdict is not comforting - the negative difference between the bank's assets and liabilities (to common people – a "hole" in the capital) is an impressive 13 billion rubles. Moreover, as luck would have it, the interim administration explicitly stated that some of the assets were taken offshore. A little later, the restless journalists of the publication " Fontanka" will find out that 9 billion rubles under fake contracts were transferred to the accounts of the Cyprus firm Hervet Investments, issued to Alexander Zuev-the brother of Tatyana Bazhanova. It would seem that "congratulations, the crime is solved", as the famous St. Petersburg bearded man used to say, but no. Although the entire pile of skeletons from the bank's cabinets was immediately sent to law enforcement agencies, the response was silence. According to the same "Fontanka", the investigator of the Main Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of St. Petersburg four times (!) made an approach to the initiation of a criminal case and four times came across a polite refusal of the Prosecutor's Office of St. Petersburg. After watching this depressing action for some time, the ex-senator, ex-Chekist and now ex-banker Bazhanov flew away from sin to London, to be sad about the fate of Russia. Fortunately, in order to make it better to be sad in a foreign country, he paid himself, his wife and his henchmen in advance "golden parachutes" of 84 million rubles and dividends in the amount of as much as 60 million rubles from the only working business – a battered business center on the Vyborg side, which he immediately sold. As a nice addition to the coveted 9 billion.

It is curious that the Bazhanovs '"home" offshore has already surfaced once in light of the bank fraud scandal. It turns out that back in 2007, the Federal Tax Service revealed a scheme related to the withdrawal of bank funds abroad through Hervet, and anyone can freely get acquainted with the verification materials.

"According to this episode of the audit, the Inspectorate found that as a result of illegal accounting for profit, taxation of transactions on the acquisition and sale of securities that are not conditioned for the Company for business purposes, the Bank underestimated the tax base for income tax for 2006 and 2007, which led to non - payment of this tax in the amount of 46,435,077 rubles in 2006 and in the amount of 23,984,655 rubles in 2007. According to the auditors, the Bank made a number of transactions for the acquisition and subsequent sale of securities (MF 2010 Eurobonds) with Hervet Investments Limited (Cyprus) in order to withdraw funds in favor of a foreign company and minimize tax liabilities, since the transactions are devoid of economic sense."

And here are the bank's excuses, containing, however, the answer that the money was withdrawn (spoiler-client): "the courts of the first and appellate instance found that during 2006-2007, a significant amount of money was transferred to the Bank from large clients on a "demand" basis (for 2006- 4 242 000 000 rub, for 2007- 8 790 000 000 rub.). Taking into account the significant amount of funds placed on demand accounts and not having a return period fixed by contractual obligations, in order to offset the risk of loss of liquidity of the Bank, it was decided to place these resources in highly liquid and reliable securities - Eurobonds MF 2010, which have the highest reliability rating guaranteed by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation."

How do you like it? According to the data for just a couple of years, the understatement of the tax base, the non-payment of 70 million rubles of taxes (then it was almost 3 million dollars), the withdrawal abroad of 13 billion rubles (half a billion dollars!) under fake deals and ... silence again. No criminal case has been initiated. Does it remind you of anything?

2. At the broken trough

Where did the money withdrawn for so many years go, probably, sooner or later, the investigation will find out. Obviously, some of it was brought back to inflate the indicators for the Central Bank – the bank's capital included loans from the already well-known Hervet Investments in the amount of 2.5 billion rubles. Part of it was used to buy apartments in Finland and France, a luxury villa on the Cote d'Azur, and a huge amount of money was required by the chic lifestyle of an elderly socialite Tatyana Bazhanova.

OK, where are the others? And here everything is banal. According to former employees of the ill-fated bank, Sergey Bazhanov has always been an official at heart and dreamed of a sedate political career. In 2008, his dream was even briefly realized in the coveted chair in the Federation Council, which, however, soon had to be released for more serious people. But his wife always saw herself as a mistress of sea business. And, despite a complete lack of managerial talent, she got into various projects with insane energy, putting her hand in an offshore pot. Being a man of the quietest and absolute "henpecked" variety, Sergey Viktorovich did not dare to object to his imperious wife.

The bank had specially created a dozen so - called "technichek" - firms registered to Bazhanova's proxies (usually relatives) and engaged exclusively in running money for projects that appeared and burst like soap bubbles. Traces of these "technicals" with inconspicuous names are still easy to find in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and the database of the arbitration court: "Monolit", "Stroygruppservis", "Rubezh", "Polyus"... I must say, sometimes the projects were quite worthy and could "take off", but it was Tatyana Vasilyevna who always spoiled everything herself. Those who know her personally can easily explain this phenomenon by her peculiar character - an unthinkable combination of belligerent ignorance, authoritarianism and unexpected stinginess, which was legendary at the bank.

For example, once a bank for debts got a great hotel in Pushkin - "Park-hotel "Potemkin". Near the Expo Center, 114 rooms, spa, restaurant, three conference halls. It would seem to be a good investment, but Tatyana Vasilyevna took up the task! Companies are immediately created to manage the hotel, and her aunt Galina Plakidina and her friend Elena Skvortsova are immediately appointed to senior positions in them. Work is in full swing, an unthinkable number of contradictory, but peremptory introductions are received, which amaze the team of "Potemkin". And while the balance sheet? is plummeting, the new management is enthusiastically spending the dwindling revenue without allocating money to maintain and update the funds. As a result, the dilapidated hotel is repeatedly for sale but a buyer was not found until the collapse of the bank itself. And here comes a story that exhaustively characterizes our businesswoman. Suddenly realizing that the half-dead Potemkin ,which is on the balance sheet of a bank no longer owned by her family, is inevitably floating out of her hands, Tatyana Bazhanova makes a desperate attempt to save at least something from its former greatness. Evil tongues say that she personally rushed to Pushkin and in one evening took out of the rooms and into her shiny Mercedes all the sets of disposable slippers and toiletries which since then and are still clogging the basement of the bank. That's the whole business.

In the photo, those same slippers are an inexhaustible reason for the creativity of employees

Needless to say, an equally unenviable fate befell other initiatives of the Bazhanovs.

Acquired in 2007 through another "technical" company "Interlizingstroy" 7 thousand square meters in the shopping complex "Promenade" built together with Mikhail Boyarsky, which is near the metro station "Komendantsky Prospekt" just a few years later also fell into disrepair and has not been used for a long time, slowly collapsing behind closed doors. Despite the fact that the part of the complex owned by D'Artagnan is at all times, of course, full of life and there are endless tenants.   

The situation is no more fun with another megaproject-a wood pellet plant built in 2006 in Veliky Ustyug. Grandiose plans for the production of 50 thousand tons of pellets per year, the announced investment of $ 9 million, the grand opening and the expected pre-bankruptcy state to date. Before the bank's license is revoked, first the real estate of the plant, and then 80% of the authorized capital is suddenly sold to a third-party company. Or maybe not quite third-party, and this is just another trick...

By the way, was it not for these construction projects that money was withdrawn from the bank, some of which was accidentally seized by the tax audit?

And then there was the purchase of the Dom Tekhniki business center in Ulyanovsk, which is not stopped by the courts, unsuccessful attempts to engage in the production of cable, an ineradicable desire to participate in the cutting of contracts for construction and restoration, including - together with the sensational company "Intarsia", the former owner of which Viktor Smirnov, by the way, is also hiding in London from criminal prosecution. Here, by the way, it should be noted that stories about the construction site may well come up-not for nothing has the company "Stroygruppservis", the director of which was still the same brother of Tatyana Bazhanova, already filed a lawsuit from the President's Department for 12.5 million rubles. How such stories will end can only be guessed, but there are plenty of examples.

It remains to be patient and state that the final sad story of the International Bank of St. Petersburg is still far away. The bank was declared bankrupt, which means that experienced vultures from the DIA took up the case and it is possible that many more unpleasant details, or, as the investigators say, episodes, will be brought to light.