I was wondering what to blog about today, as it’s grey and cold and wet and miserable and … then I realised, I should blog about Russia.Here in London, we’ve gradually seen a takeover of some of our key financial and national assets by billionaires from the former Soviet Union states.Some of these are glamorous, such as Roman Abramovich with his Chelsea dreams and billion-dollar yacht, and some are a little bit more odorous, such as Vladimir Antonov.Vladimir is on the run from various authorities, particularly those in Lithuania who accuse him of defrauding millions from the now bankrupt Snoras Bank.The former owners of the bank allege that Antonov siphoned away money through transfers to personal accounts, collateral for loans, and fake real estate deals using offshore companies.Antonov and fellow shareholder Raimondas Baranauskas supposedly used the Swiss banks HSBC Private Bank and Julius Baer & Co to transfer Snoras assets, resulting in his arrest over here in November 2011.

Antonov is now on bail awaiting extradition to Lithuania, with all of his assets in the UK seized whilst his position is investigated.The shame (or sham) of it all is that Antonov had acquired Portsmouth Football Club in June 2011, through a deal that he was later accused of making through misleading the Football League authorities.That deal resulted in Portsmouth being forced into administration five months later, with massive debts they could not pay.The club was given a 10-point penalty deduction by the league, which resulted in the team being relegated to League One.It is the first time in thirty years that the club has played at this level.These are not the only Antonov shenanigans, as he has also been caught up in a storm in Sweden over his attempt to get a slice of the action with Saab, although he denies all allegations of wrongdoings saying it’s all politically motivated.Hmmm … with a father gunned down over the Saab deal and almost killed, I suspect there's more to it than that.

For example, back in 2010 a website dedicated to exposing the Russian Mafia wrote an interesting article about the Antonovs, saying that the Ministry of Internal Affairs  of the Russian Federation were investigating the fraudulent transfer of ten billion roubles (around $320 million) from Investbank to support their acquisition interests in Saab.The site gives a lot of intriguing background to what is happening between these Russian bankers.Reading through a variety of articles, the history seems to go something like this.In 1999 Alexander Antonov, the former Chairman of Informprogress … … and his son Vladimir Antonov, a former employee of Sberbank, bought 49% of the shares in Akademchembank.At the time, the bank was on the verge of bankruptcy.Vladimir Yampolsky took the position of Deputy Chairman of Academchembank.According to information from the Interior Ministry, Valdimir is a fomer staff member of the KGB and close to all those in power, and so an ideal choice as Deputy Chairman.

Academchembank apparently blossomed by being primarily engaged in money laundering operations, attracting clientele that some would see as coming from a criminal underclass.ethereum domain registerNevertheless, the Antonovs somehow managed to stay out of trouble until they started dealing with the Russian Railways.bitcoin cpiThey persuaded Russian Railways to deposit $660 million with the bank.bitcoin goxThe deal was clear, but it got into troubles downstream when the Antonovs tried to change the name of the bank to Converse Moscow.litecoin hash poolThe Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia, Andrew Kozlov, refused to accept the bank into the Deposit Insurance System.bitcoin weed seeds

As you will see later, this is a critical part of the Antonov's operations – merge and close banks, as long as one is part of the Deposit Insurance System – and so they worked out a plan to get around this issue by transferring the bank to two banking friends, Peter Chuvilin and German Gorbuntsov.dogecoin carAcademchembank was therefore renamed Capital Commercial Bank and this bank was accepted into the Deposit Insurance System.bitcoin journal du netEverything seemed hunky-dory … until the Russian Railways requested to withdraw their money, now worth $1 billion.bitcoin transaction id wikiCapital Commercial Bank realised this was going to be too big a hit on their balance sheet, and made it clear that the bank was incapable of paying out at that time.bitcoin center manhattan

Various discussions took place amongst all of the authorities, including discussions from Putin's personal offices down, to work out what had happened.The bankers were finally ordered to pay with Chuvilin and Gorbuntsov agreeing to pay $500 million; their long-term partner Eugene Dvoskin would pay $300 million; and the bank’s Chairman Sergei Mendeleev $200 million.The bank executives were feeling pretty unhappy about this disastrous outcome and decided that the Antonovs should also be held liable, since they had borrowed around $200 million from Russian Railways before the sale of Conversebank Moscow.However, the Antonovs had built a new bank empire by then, including a number of British and Baltic banks, through their core financial vehicle Investbank and refused to pay.Their refusal allegedly led to the assassination attempt on the family on March 11th 2009.Alexander Antonov was shot five times in the stomach, once in the chest, and one of his fingers was blown off but, despite the brutal shooting, Anatov survived albeit disabled.

Vladimir Antonov was wounded but not as seriously and left the country, arranging for funds to be withdrawn from Investbank and sent to Snoras Bank via Spyker, the car company his father owned who were trying to buy Saab.Two years later, the Antonovs purchased English Portsmouth football club, and were joined by several senior managers from the Russian Railways in the transaction.Apparently, all of the issues with Russian Railways had been resolved through money obtained from the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.This is because the Antonovs helped the Russian Railways get their money back by allegedly blackmailing $1 billion from their former friend, the banker German Gorbuntsov.German had placed most of his assets in his wife’s name, Larisa.According to the rumafia website, these assets were transferred to the managers of the Russian Railways by holding German and Larisa at gunpoint, with threats made to their families and promises to burn down their house unless they signed the documents of transfer, which they did.

However, even with all of their assets taken, the Gorbuntsov’s assets did not cover all of the losses of the Russian Railways.The railways found that they were still left with 8 billion roubles (about $215 million) of debt outstanding.The Antonovs then came to the rescue, proposing a scheme where the debt would be repaid.The scheme was to buy several small to medium sized banks as long as one of them was a member of the Deposit Insurance Scheme (DIS).Being a member of the DIS means that the bank is backed by the Central Bank if it gets into any trouble.The banks then offer attractive interest rates to customers, which might include friends, until eventually the banks exposures and leverage are massively inflated.At this point, the banks are merged into the one that has the insurance with the Central Bank, and they can successfully get a stabilisation loan from the bank to bail them out.Sounds like the sort of scheme used by Western banks recently, except that these guys did it on purpose.

Anyways, back to the Antonovs.By this time Capital Commercial Bank, a member of the Central Bank’s Deposit Insurance Scheme, was on the verge of bankruptcy.The bank was therefore merged with Sberkredbank, another bank owned by Vladimir Antonov, and applied for a stabilisation loan from the Central Bank for 10 billion roubles ($320 million), of which 8 billion paid back the Russian Railways and the rest was distributed amongst other interested parties.About two billion roubles to spend at discretion on anything you like, such as buying a UK football club called Portsmouth.The newly merged bank was then allowed to collapse, leaving the Central Bank with the loan covered by the Deposit Insurance Agency.A grand scheme undermined by German Gorbuntsov, who submitted a written statement to the authorities – the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation – in February 2012.In this statement, Gorbuntsov admitted guilt to contracting the murder of Aleksandr Antonov in 2009, along with co-bank owners Petr Chuvilin and to Sergey Mendeleyev.

He did this to also lay on the table the whole history of the deal with the Russian Railways, the losses made, the threats he and his wife had received, the forced method by which he lost a billion dollars of assets, along with details of the actions and activities of the Antonovs and the Central Bank.Not a good thing to do.Shortly afterwards Gorbuntsov was shot six times in Canary Wharf, London.Gorbuntsov was left for dead but miraculously survived … … these bankers are tenacious.Picture source: the Daily Mail Guarded round-the-clock by the Metropoolitan Police, German believes he was attacked because he was preparing to give evidence to Russian prosecutors about the assassination attempt on Alexander Antonov, and all the mud that goes with it.Truly a story of intrigue and undertones that will rumble on, and makes me think that when we talk about shadow banking we don’t know what we’re talking about.And why am I talking about this today?

Because the UK encourages these activities.According to investigative journalist David Leigh, several Soviet billionaires enjoy Britain’s offshore secrecy rules to stash away their billions.Here's his article: Questions arise as mega-rich from Russia and former Soviet republics descend on London.Britain’s friendly regime of offshore secrecy has tempted an extraordinary array of post-Soviet billionaires to descend on London, sometimes to the sound of gunfire.Vladimir Antonov fled permanently to Britain after his father, Alexander, was gunned down in a Moscow street in 2009.Another associate, German Gorbuntsov, narrowly survived a volley of shots in London last March.When Antonov bought a luxury yacht in Antibes, the Sea D, he was careful to register its ownership to an anonymous British Virgin Islands (BVI) entity, Danforth Ventures Inc.He also got his hands on enough cash to try to take over the ailing Swedish car manufacturer Saab, though he did not take control.

He did succeed for a while in owning Portsmouth FC, the even more ailing British football club.Antonov is currently on bail in Britain.Lithuanian authorities are trying to extradite him for allegedly looting their collapsed bank Snoras, which he denies.The allegation that oligarchs exploit Britain’s offshore secrecy regime to shift assets out of their own countries is not an uncommon one.Another refugee from the law is the Kazakh billionaire Mukhtar Ablyazov, who was last seen in February allegedly heading out of London on a coach to France.Ablyazov has been sentenced to 22 months in jail for contempt of a UK court as the BTA Bank in Kazakhstan attempts to pursue his maze of offshore assets.The bank’s lawyers claim Ablyazov, who denies it, has made off with an astonishing £4 billion using BVI and Seychelles companies, nominee directors and layers of front-men.These billionaires justify their use of British-controlled secrecy jurisdictions because they say they must protect themselves from corporate predators and political enemies in their home countries.

Another fleeing oligarch, the Georgian Badri Patarkatsishvili, – a partner of fellow exile Boris Berezovsky – was found dead in 2008 in his Surrey mansion.Patarkatsishvili’s business manager, Eugene Jaffe, managed £500 million of the Georgian’s assets from a central London office in St James’s Square through a BVI company, Salford Capital Partners.In an additional layer of secrecy, Jaffe’s company was owned in turn by an opaque BVI trust he set up called Montana River.The wild-west financial landscape of post-Soviet Russia has attracted at least one entrepreneur from the British Isles to exploit the possibilities of the BVI secrecy regime.We have traced opaque BVI entities used in Russia by the man once known as the richest in Ireland, the property developerSeán Quinn.He expanded into schemes for shopping malls in Moscow and Kiev.He has now declared himself bankrupt and has received an Irish jail sentence for contempt, as the now state-owned Allied Irish Bank seeks to recover what it says is a missing £2 billion.

Other post-Soviet financiers have used Britain’s secret offshore facilities for widely different purposes.The London-based Latvian oil trader Evgeny Tikhonov set up an entity in the BVI to hide a total of $2.4 million (£1.5 million) that his employer, Shell, subsequently convinced a civil British court he was wrongly skimming off from fuel deals.He was, however, acquitted of criminal charges after this.The fund manager Igor Tsukanov, another arrival in the fashionable west London area of Notting Hill, kept funds in the BVI that will have apparently legally sheltered them from Russian taxes.And on a lesser scale, Dimitry Sergeev, a mobile phone games entrepreneur from Novosibirsk, faced a potentially costly dispute with a small Manchester supplier over some allegedly unpaid invoices because his firm was BVI-registered firm.A source there said: We decided it was too difficult to bring a legal action in the BVI.Sergeev did not comment.

Undoubtedly the most flamboyant post-Soviet beneficiary of Britain’s offshore secrecy regime is Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man in the Ukraine.From a base in the coal-mining Donetsk region, he has personally acquired industrial assets estimated to be worth £11 billion.He shifted £136 million out of the former Soviet republic in 2007, in order to buy the most expensive flat ever sold in London, at One Hyde Park.Asked why he hid behind a BVI company, his company spokesman in the Ukraine said it was for internal structuring reasons.He added: Water Property Holdings Limited fully paid all taxes and charges . . . as required by applicable laws in the UK.This includes payment in February 2011 of stamp duty land tax (SDLT) at a rate of 4 percent which amounted to £5.467 million.Details of Russian, Kazakh and Latvian BVI companies These ownership details are being published in the interests of transparency.It is not suggested that the setting-up of such offshore companies was in itself illegal.