The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel has learned the details of the mysterious disappearance of banker, ex-owner of the Portsmouth football club and regular witness in many high-profile cases, Vladimir Antonov. A story in the spirit of the coolest thrillers.
According to the interlocutor, Vladimir Antonov’s wife and son (this is his second family) live outside the Russian Federation, and he himself was alone in a large cottage on Rublyovka. At the beginning of December, Vladimir visited his parents and met with friends. And then, suddenly, it suddenly disappeared. When his complete silence lasted three days, a close relative went to his cottage. Everything indicated that Vladimir was inside, but no one opened the door. Then Vladimir’s father Alexander, also a former major banker who survived two assassination attempts, one of which was organized by Adam Delimkhanov, went to the place. He had the keys. There was no one inside the cottage, but everything indicated that Vladimir should be inside. His personal Mercedes was standing there; at the entrance there were keys, documents, a bag, and personal belongings.
The watchman of the cottage (the only one of the servants who lived on site permanently) said that on the day when Atonov supposedly disappeared, he arrived late in the evening in his Mercedes and soon the light came on in the office. Antonov could be seen there through the window; he had been working in his office for several hours. Then the watchman didn’t see the “chief”.
On the spot, there was a feeling that Vladimir was sitting in his office, minding his own business, and at one moment left the house (the watchman did not see this moment) and disappeared. No signs of a struggle or missing items. There is nothing suspicious on the cameras either. The banker's Mercedes was parked on the street, but for some reason it was not locked with a locking mechanism. The security at the checkpoint of the cottage village also did not note anything suspicious, and the camera in the village did not work in those days. Since then there has been no news of Vladimir. Vladimir’s father wrote a statement to the Odintsovo district police.
Vladimir Antonov was once a fairly successful banker (though always with a reputation as a participant in money laundering schemes), bought a bank in the Baltic states, the Portsmouth football club and the car company Spyker Cars N.V. in the UK. He even negotiated the purchase of the auto giant SAAB. However, then cases were opened against him in the European Union and he was forced to flee to the Russian Federation using a fake passport. In Russia, Antonov soon ended up in a pre-trial detention center on charges of embezzling funds from the Sovetsky Bank. However, I received a short sentence, and upon leaving I tried to buy different banks, but to no avail. However, Antonov did not refuse to participate in various financial transactions and in recent years has gone to great lengths.
A Rucriminal.info source from among Vladimir Antonov’s close relatives told us: “I mentally said goodbye to him. I don’t believe I’ll ever see him.” Our interlocutor connects what happened with Vladimir with the detailed testimony that he and his father Alexander gave in the case of the largest money laundering channel - Laundromat. There were many names that have not yet been brought to justice, and details of the laundering of gigantic sums by officials, as well as the “roof” of the channel from the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and the FSB of the Russian Federation. Vladimir’s “disappearance” occurred at the moment when this testimony was put into action and work began against unknown participants (including those living outside the Russian Federation) / Rucriminal.info has at its disposal the testimony of Vladimir and Alexander Antonov, which we will publish in the coming days:
“Interrogation of witness Vladimir Aleksandrovich Antonov
To questions from the court:
What's your job?
I work as an adviser to the Fund for the Protection of the Rights of Investors of Foreign Organizations.
Do you know any of the defendants?
Korkin, Sobolev and Pakhomov know each other, the others do not. ...
Please tell us where, when and under what circumstances did you meet Sobolev?
Probably, first we need to talk about how this whole story began. Actually, the topic that this court is considering is called the “Moldavian scheme” or “Laundromat”. I have known about it since the mid-2000s and, in fact, this story was launched at one time by Vyacheslav Platon. This is a famous Moldovan banker-entrepreneur; at that time he owned the Moldinko bank. Accordingly, the scheme developed rather sluggishly until the end of the 2008 crisis due to the fact that payments through Moldovan banks were quite risky; there were banks that executed such payments much more efficiently: Baltic, Cypriot, Swiss, Luxembourg, etc. After 2008, compliance procedures in these countries were significantly tightened, and many banks began to refuse to service such payments en masse. Therefore, a story arose related to servicing such a cash flow through Moldova, where compliance was weak compared to the EU countries...
Accordingly, I met Plato in the mid-2000s after we acquired the Baltic banks and Moldincom Bank was a correspondent of these banks t’s not bad.” He described in sufficient detail all the working mechanisms, how the document flow works, who is responsible for what, who runs which areas for servicing the Laundromat. At the same time, he himself traveled to Russia quite often back then, and even lived here. He (Plato) was mainly engaged in client work related to attracting new banks and new clients into the circulation of this entire structure. Returning to the state prosecutor’s question about how I met Alexey Sobolev. In 2015, we began negotiations on the acquisition of the Sovetsky bank in the city of St. Petersburg and signed with the chairman of the board and the beneficial owner, as he declared himself, a certain framework agreement on the possibility of acquiring this bank. We began the standard procedure of assessing his financial condition. The financial condition of the bank was, to put it mildly, less than ideal. Well, several questions arose about those transactions, payments and re-registration of shares on rather unique Moldovan passports inside this whole dude. Dudil is not only an assessment of the financial condition, but a general assessment of both the legal condition of the bank and relationships with counterparties, that is, the whole...
In October 2015, a temporary administration was introduced into the bank, and later it was sanitized, that is, it became state-owned. Further, despite this, we continued to communicate with Mitrushin until his departure outside the Russian Federation, where Mitrushin said quite a lot that there is a great Sobolev who solves any issues and he is not afraid of the consequences of the reorganization of the Sovetsky Bank, since There is an agreement that financial and non-financial, that everything will be resolved, all questions to Mitrushin and his partners will be removed. In addition, we discovered in the Soviet Bank, I was even surprised, there was such a platform or platform “Liberty Reserve”, it was called, quite a noisy story. This is the first international online store selling a variety of illegal products, that is, such platforms now operate everywhere, and Liberty was such a pioneer. There is probably no need to explain what is sold there, everything that cannot be sold in ordinary life. Accordingly, this story was also serviced there for some time, after which these accounts were closed. To my question “Are you yourself?” Mitrushin’s answer was “We didn’t know what it was, Sobolev brought them.” Therefore, from which I concluded that Sobolev is quite, even I would say not a partner in the Sovetsky Bank, but its real beneficiary, and, accordingly, the same Vyacheslav Platon confirmed to me that he is doing all this in the interests of continuing the operation of the scheme on illegal transfer of funds outside the Russian Federation. We met several times after Sovetsky ceased to be a private bank and became a state bank. These meetings were sporadic, but, again, when we met, we understood that everything was still functioning, everything was working, and even Sobolev arranged for us, since I was not alone in this whole structure, a meeting with another St. Petersburg bank, which was called " Energomash". I don’t know its future fate today, but, as I understand it, at that time this bank was also being considered for someone to buy it and for it to become part of this structure for transferring money abroad. As far as I know, Sobolev served in addition to the fact that the legal part of this structure, namely the registration of enterprises, offshore companies, balance sheets to the tax office, he also acquired real estate and business assets in the interests of Plahotniuc and Platon both in Europe and in territory of the Russian Federation, in Moscow, in St. Petersburg. Mainly for commercial purposes for further rental. If we are talking about the same Soviet one, then in its capital there was a set of real estate with a defect in form, which as a result of the DIA was not received. The defect in the form looked very simple, that is, for example, this is a building according to a certificate that belongs to a bank, but there is no consent from the owner’s wife. Therefore, if anything happened in court, this situation could always be returned to its rightful owners. The same set of real estate represented a significant figure. According to the capital estimate, it amounted to 6 billion rubles. As a matter of fact, under such circumstances we met Mr. Sobolev. I can also tell you about Mr. Korkin.
To the questions of the state prosecutor:
You outlined the whole scheme, please tell me, did Plato even educate you on the intricacies of how the withdrawal of funds took place?
Plato is a very professional guy and knows this business in detail, and he started in the late 90s, so when he met with banks, and especially with bankers or bank employees, they understood perfectly well what it was. This was covered up by a report from a very good international law firm, Tentens. This report was always shown where it was concluded that this operation was not illegal, it was completely normal. However, there is paper, and there are essential things, and any person who owns a bank in the territory of this pageAna, Ukraine, it doesn’t matter, she understands perfectly well what it is. That is, we understand perfectly well that this transaction is not standard and it does not represent a real business. That is, this is a completely different type of transaction. I can explain in a few words. It looks like this. There are real business relationships between exporters and importers, and there are unreal ones. Their unreality lies in the fact that in order to bring products here as cheaply as possible, you need to pay “crookedly” in order to avoid paying customs duties in full and VAT at customs. This is done very simply. Instead of introducing expensive furniture, a board or some stools are placed in the container according to the papers. It goes to customs like stools, customs duty is paid on the stools and VAT is not paid in full. This is the first thing that is done. Secondly, this is ordinary corruption money, which cannot be stored anywhere except in well-known apartments; it must be parked somewhere. ...Therefore, they need to be sent abroad through a long chain, given the appearance of the activity of some company, which will eventually park them at the end in Switzerland, Luxembourg or somewhere else, and they arrive there already washed and bleached. There used to be a lot of ways to do this, that is, these are mountains of contracts stating that companies conduct real business activities, of course, they do not conduct any of it and die very quickly. For example, you pay for Samsung electronics for some reason to some offshore shop, although you can pay at Samsung. This is done in order to import a phone at a price of less than $500 and pay less to the treasury. And the second part is very important, this is laundering, what is called sending and parking money abroad, that is, unfortunately, this is such a problem. This scheme handled this perfectly.
Did Plato tell you how this scheme was supposed to work?
Yes, sure. He couldn’t help but tell me how it works because I was interested, I asked him myself. It works quite primitively. On the territory of Russia, in Russian banks and on the territory of Moldova, in Moldovan banks, mutual correspondent accounts are opened, which in banking language are called ..., that is, our account is with you and your account with us. Next, Russian banks open a set of Russian enterprises, and foreign banks open a set of foreign enterprises. And you have two ways to send money there. The first is the generation of fake or non-existent contracts for export-import operations, and the second is the execution of decisions of foreign courts in Russia. Previously, it all worked easily and calmly. Since in Moldova Mr. Plahotniuc controlled not only the Central Bank, but also the judicial system, such decisions were issued quite easily and quickly. Further, given that Moldova is a former Soviet republic, our judicial authorities should have applied such decisions and issued the corresponding writs of execution, since the court there made such a decision, we have an agreement with Moldova on this topic. After which this writ of execution is presented to the bank and the money is sent. Accordingly, the Russian bank sells currency to a Moldovan bank, and the Moldovan bank, in turn, makes a foreign currency payment to its correspondent account to some real import bank and where the mailing comes from, or transfers it to its correspondent account to a semi-real bank, and there, accordingly, to another Moldovan bank and from that Moldovan bank to the real one and then the mailing goes. This is done so that it is not visible how the money went, how the initial sender is connected to the final recipient. You can make any type of currency, you can keep a non-resident ruble in a correspondent account in a Moldovan bank. A non-resident ruble is a ruble that has already passed exchange control and is ready to be sent. It is quite primitive, nothing new can be added there. It grew so much because, in fact, there was the only cheap, fast and convenient sending channel. At the time when it reached its peak after 2011-2012, regulation did not allow normal banks to carry out such operations, since they risked having their license revoked. Therefore, if you look at the list of credit institutions that were in the chain, these are mostly credit institutions that have no value. Everyone understood perfectly well that such a bank would survive for some time, even more or less long, but not for long, and developing such a bank as a bank was absurd. Therefore, everyone knew perfectly well what was happening and how it was happening. But the level of commission that was then already available for these operations on the market made it possible to consider the economy as highly profitable, highly profitable. In 2005, this operation cost 0.1% of turnover, in 2011-2012 it could cost 10-11% of turnover. This is the difference due to the tightening of the settlement. Therefore, if in 2005 this was done by any Russian bank at the click of a button, then in 2011-2012 and beyond this became a serious problem especially for exporters/importers, and people who needed to Yes, what to do with money that is lying in an incorrect way.
What do you know about what percentage Plato offered for his services?
Here you cannot take a constant, it would not be fair, since there was a floating rate, which depended on the volume, type of currency, where you want to receive the money, at what speed you want to receive it, how much you are willing to leave on the balance. For example, I know that according to Grigoriev’s turnover at the Russian Land Bank, 30% of the turnover should have been in accounts, which is critically important for the bank’s liquidity, because if there is a hole in the bank, for example, liquidity has suffered or there is no capital, or it is negative, then this is critically important. As I understand it, Plato only met with wholesalers who did not supply to the end client. As I understand it, there was only one final client - the railway, and for wholesale comrades there is always a corresponding wholesale discount, as is usually the case. Therefore, I believe that the figure they received at the entrance was 3-4% at that time, now it would cost twice as much. Well, some are 5, some are 2.5, it depends on the agreements.
Please tell me which bank was involved in the Moldovan scheme on the territory of Moldova?
The Moldovan scheme involved 80% of the system. I don’t remember all the names of Moldovan banks, there are quite a few of them, but I know for sure that the first was Moldincom, then Victoria, one of the largest, then Uni, Universal, I don’t remember all the names. To be honest, we did not have a subsidiary bank in Moldova, so I don’t know the system that well, but the fact is that 80% of the banks were controlled by Plahotniuc.
Do you know anything about Moldinkom Bank?
Slava’s sister, Elena, was always in charge of the treasury in Moldinkom. Under it, in fact, there were all departments related to servicing operational activities and the treasury. Initially, when we met in Lithuania in the mid-2000s, in Latvia, the entire business of Moldincom, namely the operational part, was run by Elena Platon. She came to the Baltics more than once because they constantly maintained correspondent relations with us, since we had a large correspondent network and for us, to be honest, Moldincom was a small counterparty, but nevertheless a whole bank. Therefore, they interacted with Snoas and LKB quite actively. The only covenant that we have always set is zero payments from the Russian Federation, since we had a large bank in Russia and we did not want consequences from the regulator in relation to us, but they paid from Ukraine and from Kazakhstan.
On the territory of Ukraine, Plato had some kind of business, legal companies that accompanied this scheme?
Slava had a large office in Ukraine and a very “cheerful” relationship with the Ukrainian establishment. I understand that everyone understands what Ukraine is, there is no need to explain, and the fact that Ukraine has different legislation on such operations, but it is similar to Russian and there is also such a problem, but it is easier to solve because the regulator, law enforcement There are no organs in our understanding, so it seems to be prohibited, but allowed. The price is cheap, not the same as in Russia, but the volume is large because it’s easy to pay from Ukraine. I met Plato many times in Kyiv, since at least once a month I had a business trip to Kyiv. We met in Kyiv in our office. Almost all Ukrainian banks worked through Moldincom. Of course, I understand that Ukraine is not comparable to Russia in terms of volume of operations, but it was a significant market for him. Plus, he knew a lot of people from the Ukrainian establishment (he lists the names of people from the government). Slava had a good relationship with the National Bank, he did not have his own bank because there was no point, but Moldincom worked there in a representative manner at full capacity.
Did Plato tell you exactly which banks were directly involved in the Moldovan scheme on the territory of the Russian Federation?
Grigoriev had Zapadny, RZB, Tempbank, quite large. Kuzmin is the European Express, Regioninvest. There were about 60 of them. That’s why they wanted to include the Soviet bank in this story, since the bank was relatively large, 30 billion assets on the balance sheet, the correspondent network was not bad, and the volume of payments could be launched large, that is, it would not be so noticeable , like at some Intercapital bank, where there is nothing but a 10 million dollar balance sheet, including capital and one office in Moscow in the basement. In Ukraine the situation was different. One way or another, all decent normal banks worked there, including Raiffeisen, through this story. It’s just that everything is different there, there is a different regulator, different supervision, everything happens differently there.
Do you personally know Kuzmin and Grigoriev?
I know Grigoriev, but not Kuzmin. I met Grigoriev under the following circumstances. When my father and I had trouble with Lithuania in 2011, we had our first mistaken desire to buy a Russian bank. Accordingly, we began to look for a bank and were offered RZP as the object of the transaction. Grigoriev flew to me in London, where we talked withhim for a couple of days. He told me quite frankly what was happening with the bank’s condition and operations. Since I have been involved in this business all my adult life, it was clear that the bank was not a tenant, which is what I told Alexander, that taking into account the operating system he was running, this was the end. He said that everything was covered up according to the documents, there were all the relevant conclusions, that everything was clearly covered up from the point of view of law enforcement. Actually, it was Korkin who spoke then again. Everything is covered from the point of view of Moldova, so all requests that will be sent will be fought. To which I said that the problem is not what is there on the papers, don’t consider me an idiot. That's why we didn't go into this story. Then he offered to enter into the capital of Zapadny, but Zapadny Bank was a fairly large Russian bank, not included in the hundred, but definitely included in the second. And here, maybe we were ready for this project, but a virus had already been launched into it and it was already in such a volume that indicated that it was not viable.
What do you mean by virus?
The virus is Laundromat payments. The regulator sees all this quite clearly, and Rosfinmonitoring sees all this, so maybe for some time this may be possible, in agreement with some uncle Cherkalin, it will work, but anyway it will end sooner or later. Therefore, if you have already been admitted there, then it is not possible to get out.
And who did the initiative to buy Grigoriev’s bank come from?
From Grigoriev himself, since he bought Zapadny and was ready to sell RZB. But I think that maybe he would have sold it to someone if he had run into people who were less knowledgeable than we are. And since he no longer had time to do this, since the Central Bank revoked the license precisely for this, and then the hole became visible, etc., then in general, Western was also coming to an end.
You don’t know Kuzmin personally, but at the same time, do you know that Kuzmin’s bank also worked?
Certainly. The fact is that Grigoriev, when he bought Zapadny, he tried to stop these operations, get into the banking business, and somehow his dialogue with Plahotniuc did not work out, he told me this himself. He even flew to communicate with him several times. And as far as I understand, the European Express has become a replacement for the main correspondent. Then the Baltic states appeared. And at some stage, European Express allowed these payments without considering that there was anything bad in it, or pretending that there was nothing wrong with it. In general, any professional person who has worked in a bank for at least 5 years understands well what it is, that is, it is not some kind of secret. You can make any documents that this is all good, but it’s still visible.
Who selected clients to withdraw funds from the Russian Federation?
It wasn't a matter of who picked them, they didn't need to be picked, there were so many of them that they were looking for an opportunity. And then they just needed to reach the right counterparty. The most basic part of the earnings goes to those who are at the front, who work with the clientele, who set the tariffs. As far as I know, Slava Platon personally did this, Korkin, and whoever didn’t do it because it was flowing, Vlasov. If we look at the list of banks, there are a lot of them. And here the question is that you must also agree with the bank with which you are working because the bank is not stupid and understands how everything is divided. Plus those banks that were in the chain, they also had their own clients who also went to the stream, and they had to coordinate this with the counterparties here, with Plato or with Corkin, since Corkin was actually a representative of Plahotniuc, and Platon was Plahotniuc’s partner . It is not known who is older or younger. At that time there was no channel, in fact, this was the only channel. It was multifaceted, there were many banks, but there was only one final gateway. Then we only had to say what we could.
Did Platon introduce you personally to Korkin? do you know each other?
We knew each other very poorly, at various events. Chuvilina interacted with him at some events and parties. Well, to be honest, the banking world is quite small and everyone knows each other. After all, we were a large organization, one of the largest banking groups, so, of course, we were constantly present at some events. But from a lot of my acquaintances and comrades I heard information that this is a serious person who represents the interests of the “Moldovan dad” and, accordingly, resolves any issues, since he has good connections in the states here. The names of people were called, as you know in the book, who are not named out loud.
Tell me, please, was Korkin introduced to you by his last name or first name?
I saw two documents. I saw a document addressed to Korkin, because our security service was cheerful, and Kuznetsov. Why this was done then is because when a person is engaged in this type of business, sometimes when you come somewhere, it is better to say that you were not there.
Returning to Sobolev and Pakhomov, regarding the role in the “Moldavian scheme”, can you tell us specifically about Sobolev in the “Moldavian scheme”?
Well, essentially, this is a person whoth was an equal partner of Plato and Plahotniuc, as a result, on the territory of the Russian Federation. That is, this is a person who had a certain resource in our law enforcement system, a person who had knowledge and a large legal company, Primedwise, who could acquire the necessary assets, select the right people, and put management on these assets. This was a serious partner, and not just a third-party organization that was hired for one or two transactions.”
Timofey Grishin
To be continued
Source: www.rucriminal.info
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