Today we’re presenting a short report devoted to one of the most frequent characters in this cozy little blog: the “bank” VTB.
This report was prepared by our Anti-Corruption Foundation together with The Henry Jackson Society, one of the most respected think tanks in the field of international relations in Britain. The report is published here. The Russian translation is available here. The document is aimed primarily at an international audience, and THJS will distribute it to ten thousand recipients around the world. First and foremost to investment bankers, financial analysts, and other people for whom the financial sector is a core area of interest—but not only them: also politicians, journalists, and public figures. Why is this important? At our record-breakingly expensive APEC summit, VTB chief “banker” Kostin was practically the star and chairman—he opened the event. This is a major political gesture: VTB is becoming a symbol of Russian state capitalism and its glossy showcase. They spin fairy tales to foreigners, telling them how wonderful everything is at this successful “bank.” At the same time, inside the country everyone agrees that VTB is indeed the showcase and symbol of Russian state capitalism. But the reality is very different from the stories told at the summit: it is a thieving money-laundering outfit that endlessly devours budget funds allocated as “financial assistance,” run by incompetent, corrupt people who hold their posts only because they a) keep the schemes running, b) find cushy jobs for assorted children and relatives, and c) are themselves children and relatives. Where the son of the former FSB director worked: at VTB Where the son of the current FSB director works: at VTB Where the son of the head of the presidential administration worked: at VTB Where Matviyenko’s son works: at VTB And where they found a job for the husband of Medvedev press secretary Budberg: from an ordinary journalist to Kostin’s adviser with a perfectly legal million-dollar salary. These are just the most obvious examples. And how many colonels, generals, ministers, deputy ministers, and their families are feeding off it there? A huge number. So it is hardly surprising that VTB, in full view of the entire country and the whole world, can pull off hellish stunts like the one involving Bank of Moscow—and we, as taxpayers, pay for those stunts. Read Sergei Aleksashenko, read former MTS director Vasily Sidorov (here and here). And the crooked VTB crowd themselves, along with all the remoras clinging to them, happily buy up real estate in London and on the French Riviera, not forgetting—while chewing truffles—to lecture everyone about how patriotic they are, how deeply they care about Russia’s greatness, and how they support the National Leader, V.V. Putin. The goal is to make sure that anyone sitting at a similar summit in the future, upon seeing Kostin and listening to his speeches about Putin’s greatness, remembers: ah yes, that’s the guy who bought a bank with $3 billion in state money, then “suddenly” discovered that the bank was worth nothing, yet instead of going to prison he got even more state money; ah yes, those are the people who stole $152 million from their own bank and scattered it through offshore accounts in a single drilling-rig deal; ah yes, those are the ones who issue kickback-driven “loans” that the “borrower,” quite openly and without embarrassment, spends on buying a 115-meter yacht. All this VTB-linked crookery belongs on various “Magnitsky lists” (sanctions lists named after Sergei Magnitsky), and better still, those involved should face criminal prosecution for money laundering. In Russia, that is impossible for now. In the West, it is still very difficult. We are going to keep doing it anyway, and sooner or later, we will win. PS VTB and Kostin quite predictably responded with: “Takes one to know one”:
VTB advised Navalny to look for corruption in his own foundation State-owned bank VTB accused Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and the Henry Jackson Society’s Russia Studies Centre of bias against the bank and of spreading false information. In this way, Reuters reports, VTB responded to the joint publication by the Russian and British organizations, which focused on examples of questionable management decisions at the state bank. My response is this: Citizen Suspect Kostin, people have searched our foundation for “corruption,” or whatever else, every way they can. Searches, wiretaps, constant physical surveillance. Searches of my home, searches of my parents’ home. So far they have found nothing, and the lists of seized items would be better entered in a comedy contest:
Having found nothing, they simply fabricate cases—but even that is not very convincing. If the many Investigative Committee major-case investigators and FSB operatives who deal with nothing but me devoted just a little more attention to at least the “drilling rigs case,” not to mention Bank of Moscow, then you and your entire management board would be shipped off to Mordovia for a long time (a Russian region associated with prison camps). You think you’ve got God by the beard, and that you’ll be the ones sending everyone else to Mordovia forever. You are mistaken. As for the facts presented in the report, they are absolutely irrefutable. If you have objections, then make them. So far, instead of answering direct and simple questions, we see only a paid hit piece in a corrupt little newspaper, which is being pushed by members of the Nashi movement. It’s not even respectable. Presumably the PR budget was stolen too.