The ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) has quietly begun working to turn the journalistic report about bribes transferred to the offshore companies of Putin’s friend into a demand for official investigations in Russia and abroad.
Obviously, we are unlikely to get a proper investigation in Russia right now — Putin is hardly going to allow himself to be impeached and put on trial.
However, if we believe a crime has been committed, then we demand an investigation. That is the rule of our organization. Even decisions refusing to open a case will one day be used at a grand tribunal as evidence of abuse of office and the deliberate destruction of the law enforcement system.
Moreover, the Panama Papers clearly contain facts that could become the subject of an international investigation.
Let’s start by looking into Sberbank. I am one of its minority shareholders and a member of the committee for work with minority shareholders.
I very much hope the bank was not involved in any dubious schemes and that all of this concerns only Troika Dialog before it was acquired by Sberbank (yet another reason to say it was a bad purchase and an overpriced one).
Gref himself said exactly that today:
However, the article describes it this way:
It could also be interpreted to mean that bribes were paid even after Sberbank acquired Troika. In any case, Troika is now part of the bank, and any investigations or fines will become a problem for the entire organization.
So this needs to be clarified and the matter put to rest.
For all its difficulties, Sberbank is clearly trying to be a first-rate institution and is doing a great deal to achieve that. This is a good moment to demonstrate leadership on this issue as well. To show once again that Sber is not VTB, which has long since turned into a corrupt money-laundering outfit that barely engages in banking at all. It is an institution that values its reputation.
The risks are very high: if Sberbank is hit with additional sanctions and/or becomes the target of an international anti-money-laundering investigation, the damage to shareholders will be enormous.
It seems extremely important to me that the head of the bank proactively launch an internal investigation, announce it publicly, and provide shareholders with all documents related to the questionable transactions.
This is the letter I sent to Sberbank today:
People