THE BANKRUPTCY TRUSTEE IS MASSIVELY CHALLENGING THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE FORMER OWNERS TO WITHDRAW THE ASSETS OF THE IBSP
As already reported, in the decision of the Arbitration Court of the City of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region of October 3, 2019 The International Bank of St. Petersburg, owned by the ex-senator from the Ulyanovsk region Bazhanov Sergey (Bazhanov Sergey), was declared bankrupt and bankruptcy proceedings were opened against it for a period of one year. The functions of the bankruptcy trustee are assigned to the State Corporation "Deposit Insurance Agency".
Having studied the results of the interim administration's work on the management of the IBSP, the DIA predictably stated, that at the date of revocation of the license, 60% of the bank's total assets were accounted for by scheme financing with the participation of non-residents, presumably for the purpose of asset withdrawal. In particular, credit transactions were concluded between the Bank and a number of major international counterparties. In the future, the debt of counterparties was assigned to companies controlled by the Bank in the framework of fiduciary transactions, which allowed the Bank to distort the official statements. At the same time, the publicity and popularity in the market of most of these counterparties allowed the Bank to hide the actual debtors and their inherent risks.
As of October 22, 2019, the bankruptcy trustee of the Bank has already submitted claims of 1,847 applicants for a total amount of 22,829,031 thousand rubles. At the same time, according to the interim administration, as of the date of the opening of bankruptcy proceedings, the book value of IBSP assets, taking into account the exclusion of the amount of the created reserve for possible losses and depreciation of fixed assets, amounted to only 11,255,517 thousand rubles. This is despite the fact that than 220 million rubles have already been spent on the maintenance of the bank after the revocation of the license. Information-about-the-state-of-affairs-in-the-Bank-IBSP-JSC-on-01.10.2019. pdf, and by the end of the year, the DIA plans to spend almost 115 million more on the bankruptcy procedure.
Based on such a sad arithmetic, according to the preliminary assessment of the bankruptcy trustee, taking into account the need to pay the current costs of conducting the Bank's bankruptcy proceedings, funds in the amount of about 4 billion rubles, that is, less than 20% of the volume of the declared claims, can be allocated to satisfy the claims of the Bank's creditors after the closure of the register of creditors ' claims at the initial stage. As for the future prospects of repayment of creditors ' funds, it will largely depend on the receipt of funds in the bankruptcy estate from the sale of the bank's property. The DIA will have a difficult task to challenge in court transactions related to the withdrawal of assets by former owners, to establish the location of debtors, their actual financial condition and the availability of real collateral under loan agreements. And, admittedly, the bankruptcy trustee took up the case very energetically – in just two days, he filed 33 (!) applications to the Arbitration Court of the city of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region for the invalidation of various banking operations, agreements and contracts concluded by the previous owners. Among the disputed transactions are personal transactions of Sergey and Tatyana Bazhanov, as well as payments of Russian and offshore companies controlled by them. Among the defendants appear familiar names-involved in the scandal with the withdrawal of 9 billion rubles from the IBSP Cyprus company Hervet Investments Limited, registered to the brother of Tatiana Bazhanova, Soveliony Investments Limited lit up in connection with the loss of more than a billion rubles issued as a loan to the burst fuel holding Avro, the ingloriously disappeared hotel project LLC "PARK HOTEL "Pushkin" , and many new names that promise interesting stories in the future.
It is still difficult to say how successful the DIA's fight to increase the competitive mass will be, but practice shows that the Agency has the necessary experience and enormous legal and law enforcement resources. A significant change in the situation in favor of the affected clients should also be the initiation of a criminal case at the request of the interim administration, the search and seizure of the assets of the Bazhanov family and their accomplices around the world.