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Written by Spec007

Published: 07 June 2021

The amount of the claim, which will be answered by the bankers, is 12.2 billion rubles.

The DIA plans to attract the owners and top management of the International Bank of St. Petersburg( IBSP), which had its license revoked in 2018, according to the telegram channel "Truba pod Neglinnaya".

According to the channel, among the defendants in the claim for 12.2 billion rubles are the former owner of the bank and chairman of the Management Board Sergey Bazhanov, ex — members of the management Board Maxim Anishchenkov and Tatyana Berezhanskaya, as well as former members of the Board of directors Tatyana Bazhanova and Alexander Zuev.

IBSP had its license revoked in October 2018. The Central Bank has identified a "hole" in the bank's balance sheet of 15.5 billion rubles. Then, in 2018, the reason given for the deplorable state of affairs in the bank by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation was "the use of a risky business model", because of which "a significant amount of problem assets" was formed on the balance sheet of the credit institution, which led to "a complete loss of the bank's own funds". In 2019, the bank was declared bankrupt.

In December last year, the Investigative Committee for the North-West opened a criminal case against the president and owner of IBSP Sergey Bazhanov on the falsification of financial statements. He was charged in January 2021 in absentia, as the ex-banker is abroad.

Earlier, Novy Prospekt reported that Sergey Bazhanov and Tatiana Bazhanova were reinstated on the register of creditors of the first stage of their bank through the court and demand the return of almost 1 billion rubles to them as individual depositors.

Source Nevsky Prospekt

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Written by Юля

Published: 07 June 2021

Each bank owner can have an account or deposit in their own bank. However, can a bank owner become a first-line creditor in the bankruptcy of their own bank? By the decision of the AC SPb and LO of 26.10.2020 in case no. A56-140063/2018 / vozr. 2, the claims are that the former Chairman of the Management Board of the International Bank of St. Petersburg Bazhanov S. V. and his wife Bazhanova T. V. were included in the first place in the register of claims of the Bank's creditors in the amount of more than 1 billion rubles. 

On 27.05.2021, the court of cassation returned to the question of including the Bazhanovs ' claims for a new consideration. The court applied the Review of the practice of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on the claims of affiliated persons from 29.01.2020. 

The above-mentioned Review of the Practice of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of 29.01.2020 has been widely used in cases of bankruptcy of legal entities, however, I have not personally met with cases of application of these clarifications in the bankruptcy of credit institutions. I believe this is due to the fact that the persons controlling the bank in the run-up to bankruptcy, as a rule, tend to take money from the accounts, rather than deposit it into the accounts. Therefore, in the bankruptcy of banks, we are dealing with a large number of applications for challenging payments made with preferential satisfaction under Article 61.3 of the GOITER. At the same time, the deposit of funds and their further spending can be coordinated, which, of course, should be investigated by the court when including the claims of affiliated creditors in the register. 

We used to think that the bank is a formalized structure with a large number of bureaucratic barriers that should prevent all kinds of abuse. The presence of a regulator in the form of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation is also intended to contribute to this. However, on closer inspection, you can see that the abuses are still the same, only their scale changes. 

So, according to the DIA and creditors, already during the property crisis, the bank's shareholder opened deposits in it for a total amount of 1 billion rubles, thereby guaranteeing a place in the first stage of the register of claims in the upcoming bankruptcy of the bank. I will not go into the issues of proving the occurrence of a crisis situation, this is a subject for a separate article. I will note another important feature: the funds deposited in deposits can be used by the bank to execute payment orders of other bank clients. For subordination, the source of origin of the funds provided to the debtor is not essential. Regardless of the source of the funds, making deposits should be recognized as financing the debtor during the crisis, since it gives current liquidity to the bank for the execution of payment orders. 

Also, the circumstances of the bank's further spending of funds are important, namely, the execution of payment orders of the bank's clients in the run-up to bankruptcy. In the bankruptcy case of IBSP, there are a number of disputed payments to companies affiliated with the debtor, in particular for 40 million and 61 million rubles. Also under consideration are the applications of the DIA to challenge payments to one of the bank's shareholders in the amount of 1.1 billion, made less than a month before the introduction of the interim administration. Thus, the funds deposited by the controlling person could later be directed to the preferential satisfaction of the claims of the third-stage creditors affiliated with it. The coordination of actions in this case led to the fact that the controlling person changed the order of repayment of their claims from the third to the first. The choice of the financing structure, taking into account the subsequent bankruptcy, is the basis for lowering the priority of the controlling persons ' claims. I believe that these issues will be the subject of consideration in the court of first instance after the return of the case from the court of cassation.

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Written by Юля

Published: 07 April 2021

As it became known to Kommersant, a case was opened in St. Petersburg on the fact of fraudulent embezzlement of funds from the International Bank of St. Petersburg (IBSP), which belonged to former Senator Sergei Bazhanov. This happened two years after the Central Bank discovered the withdrawal of its assets through the transfer of claims to counterparties and the acquisition of illiquid assets. In a criminal case, we can talk about several billion rubles. Mr. Bazhanov has already been put on the wanted list in another criminal case – on the falsification of financial documents-and is now abroad.

GSU of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of St. Petersburg opened a criminal case under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud on a particularly large scale) on the fact of embezzlement of funds of the International Bank of St. Petersburg. This happened two years after the Central Bank made a statement about the withdrawal of assets from it. During the audit of the financial condition of the IBSP in early 2019, the interim administration identified in the actions of the bank's officials signs of operations aimed at withdrawing assets through the transfer of rights of claims to a number of counterparties to its shareholder, as well as the acquisition of illiquid assets. The information was sent to the Prosecutor General's Office, the TFR and the Ministry of Internal Affairs for making a procedural decision.

In October 2019, the Central Bank revoked the IBSP license to conduct banking operations. The Central Bank explained this decision as a "risky business model", which led to the formation of "a significant amount of distressed assets, including derivative financial instruments and unconfirmed (fake) claims against non-resident companies." This decision was preceded by the transfer to the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) of the functions of the interim administration for the management of the IBSP for six months. In 2019, the "hole" in the bank's capital was estimated at 13.1 billion rubles. Then the DIA reported on operations that have signs of asset withdrawal. Around the same time, the International Bank of St. Petersburg was declared bankrupt and opened bankruptcy proceedings against it. Sergey Bazhanov's JSC "Triumph", which owned about 7% of the IBSP, went to the Supreme Court, trying to challenge the loss of the license, but the court sided with the Central Bank.