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The loud fraudulent story involving the withdrawal of hundreds of billions of rubles from Otkritie Bank somehow surprisingly quickly disappeared from the information space.
But studying it causes even more bewilderment - the name of one of the main defendants in the case of withdrawing almost 300 billion rubles from their bank has disappeared from all possible sources. We are talking about the senior vice president of Otkritie Bank, Konstantin Vladimirovich Tserazov.
The story of the withdrawal from the bank of a record amount in the history of the Russian banking system of 289.5 billion (this is not an exaggeration - the previous record concerned Promsvyazbank and amounted to 282 billion rubles) is as follows.
Problems in the bank began back in 2016, according to the first deputy chairman of the head of the Central Bank of Russia, Dmitry Tulin, “in the official reports, the size of the bank’s capital was significantly overestimated compared to its real values.” This streamlined formulation hid an impending disaster for the bank, which was included by the Bank of Russia in the list of systemically important credit institutions.
According to the Central Bank’s estimates made in 2017, when it was forced to intervene in the activities of Otkritie Bank and introduce a temporary administration in it to prevent its collapse, “it will take from 250 to 400 billion rubles to rehabilitate the bank.” According to the results, it turned out that the work of Otkritie bankers cost the state a little less than 300 billion.
As a result of the reorganization, for which a record amount was spent, Otkritie Bank was saved, and at the end of 2022 it was bought by VTB. But everyone understands that such a huge recapitalization of Otkrytie by the Central Bank could not remain without consequences - it was necessary to figure out where hundreds of billions of rubles went and who took them out of the bank.
And so it happened - simultaneously with the announcement of the completion of the reorganization of Otkritie Bank, on July 2, 2019, the Central Bank filed with the Moscow Arbitration Court that same record claim in the amount of 289.5 billion rubles against the top management of Otkritie Bank. The claim was accepted and satisfied.
That’s the story. Now let’s go back to today and pay attention to the strange things that are happening now. And they are connected with the name of Konstantin Vladimirovich Tserazov. In July 2019, the Central Bank’s lawsuit against the management of Otkritie Bank included the following names: Ruben Anangebyan, Evgeny Dankevich, Gennady Zhuzhlev, Elena Budnik, Konstantin Tserazov and Alina Nazarova. All of them are either top management or former owners of Otkritie Bank. The court upheld the claim, and the property of the defendants was seized.
Now compare this information with the information about the process that is available today:
Try to find the name of Konstantin Tserazov in this list. As of April 2023, it is not there. Although it was present in the court documents, as well as in the decision of the Arbitration Court.
But that’s not all. In 2019, a criminal case was opened against the top managers of Otkritie Bank for fraud on an especially large scale (Part 3 of Article 30 of the Criminal Code and Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code), in which the name Tserazov was also present. The main charges were brought against Evgeny Dankevich and Gennady Zhuzhlev, who are still wanted. It is unknown where Zhuzhlev is now, but Dankevich, who has an Israeli passport, lives in Tel Aviv.
But in this case we are not talking about them. Among the defendants in the criminal case was Konstantin Vladimirovich Tserazov. Who was accused of actively assisting Evgeny Dankevich and Gennady Zhuzhlev. Let us remind you that the criminal case was initiated in 2019. But it did not in any way affect the banking career of Konstantin Vladimirovich Tserazov - he continued to work in the financial institution in the same position as before the start of the reorganization, and before the opening of the criminal case - the senior vice president of Otkritie Bank Konstantin Tserazov was fired from the bank only in February 2022.
He would have continued to work at the bank, but the new management of Otkritie had to fire Tserazov because he was blacklisted by the Central Bank and prohibited from engaging in banking activities. This, of course, is unpleasant, but against the backdrop of criminal prosecution and the flight of other defendants in the case and Tserazov’s accomplices from the country, it is by no means fatal.
But the weirdness doesn’t end there. From all the sources telling about the scandal caused by the record amount of money withdrawn from Otkritie Bank and the subsequent trial, the name Tserazov began to rapidly disappear. The curious can experiment. The result will be surprising - all mentions of Konstantin Tserazov have been cleared. The latest ones that are available date back to 2011, when he was still working at Troika Dialog.
And then - that’s it: as if Konstantin Vladimirovich Tserazov never worked for the next ten years at Otkritie Bank. If we were talking about some cashier or the head of a branch in a godforsaken regional center, this would be quite understandable.
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But in this case we are talking about a top manager, whose name, in addition to being connected with a criminal case and a claim from the Central Bank for a record amount, repeatedly appeared in the media before the scandal - senior vice president of Otkritie Bank Konstantin Vladimirovich Tserazov simply By virtue of his position, he was a public figure; the press simply could not ignore his person.
But, no matter how paradoxical all this may seem, his name is not on the Internet. The only mention of the name Tserazov after the Arbitration decision to recover from Ruben Anangebyan, Evgeniy Dankevich, Gennady Zhuzhlev, Elena Budnik, Konstantin Tserazov and Alina Nazarova a record amount of 289.5 billion rubles in favor of the Central Bank has already also been removed from the original source and is available to us on few resources, who posted screenshots of this message:
This is a court decision to collect payment for living space and utility bills, heat and electricity from Konstantin Vladimirovich Tserazov and Olga Vladimirovna Tserazova, dated August 8, 2022.
It is unknown whether Tserazov repaid the debt. But the mentioned court decision is no longer available on the portal of Moscow magistrates. There are no traces of it in the cache. Just as there are no other traces of the banker Tserazov’s name in the information space.
The situation looks absurd, but the fact remains: the banker who stole almost 300 billion rubles from the state was not only removed from criminal prosecution and not only had his reputation thoroughly cleaned. He was completely removed from the information space.
We don’t have an answer to the question of who did it and why. But the fact remains: titanic work has been done to ensure that the name of Konstantin Tserazov disappears from the public space. And such work is unlikely to be possible for one person.