EX-HEAD OF THE BANKRUPT RUSSIAN MERCHANT BANK RECEIVED 8 YEARS IN PRISON

Igor Safonov, accused of embezzlement of 4 billion, was sentenced by the court to an eight-year term of imprisonment. The former chairman of the Board of the bank was tried under Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Part 4). The verdict of the Khamovnichesky court of the capital itself, the lawyers of the convicted person can still try to appeal.

In April 2018, as the investigation found, Igor Safonov signed a contract under which Russian Commercial Bank (RTBK) bought a package of non-liquidity securities worth over 2.5 billion rubles from the counterparty. As Kommersant notes, the credit institution transferred more than 1.3 billion rubles to businessmen controlled by the top manager. After that, the funds were issued in cash at the bank's cash desk.

It was also reported that on the direct instructions of the head of the bank, the organization acquired the rights of claim for a number of obligations of various firms that borrowed money from the bank. As a result, more than 816 million rubles were withdrawn from the RTBK budget.

The regulator stripped RTBK of its license in April 2019. A few months later, in August of the same year, the credit institution was declared insolvent. The final beneficiaries of the bank were Alexander Avrutin, Sergey Tyulenev, Sergey and Nina Muravlenko. By the time the license was revoked, the bank was ranked 215th in Russia according to the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.

Measures related to subsidiary liability of the bank's top managers were recently added to the criminal punishment of Igor Safonov. On January 17, the AC GM granted the request of the bankruptcy trustee and imposed interim measures against Safonov and four other RTBK executives in the amount of 6.6 billion rubles. Rosregistratsiya received a ban on registering the rights to the property of debtors.

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