Clients of the failed Sodbiznesbank picket the Russian Central Bank. The slogan reads ''Who's Next?''
Photo: Pavel Smertin, Kommerant
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Viktor Zubkov Made Up a New Black List of Banks
Déjà vu
Last Friday, Viktor Zubkov, head of the Federal Finance Monitoring Service announced that ten Russian banks are suspected of laundering. Andrey Kozlov, Chief Deputy of Chairman of Central Bank said ten days ago that they want to revoke licenses from two banks, apparently accessorial to laundering. Neither Zubkov, nor Kozlov named the banks. That is the way a last year bank crisis started. Let’s just hope that this time it will be farce, not a tragedy.
Last Friday, the head of the Federal Finance Monitoring Service summed up the results of the job of his service for the last year. In short, the results are the following: the service ran 3.260 finance investigations and the law-enforcement agencies got 101 materials. As a result, they educed 170 billion laundered rubles. Last year they discovered 70 billion. Still, Zubkov said that the figure is higher not because there appeared more frauds. It’s just because the service began to work more efficiently: “We began to work better, the system is working and we become more professional and built ties with foreign colleagues.”
Later Zubkov went on to the next item- laundering by the Russian banks. The speech created the feeling of déjà vu. According to Zubkov, some banks keep on doing operations that look like laundering. “There are not many of them. Mostly, they are small banks.” Still, it may happen that big banks can be found among the small banks. Ten days ago, Kozlov said that Bank of Russia is examining the possibility of revoking licenses from two banks: “Now we’re working on two more banks.”
Let us remind that last year Zubkov announced that his service suspects of laundering ten banks four days after they had revoked Sodbiznesbank’s license. After that there were lots of rumors about this so called black list. It’s all coming back now.
Last wee, Central Bank revoked tow licenses. The act has nothing to do with laundering. It was done because of a poor financial condition of the banks. Apparently Kozlov meant two other banks. It looks like Russian Depository Bank is one of them. According to Zubkov, its management washed out $20 million and was condemned. The service’s head also accused Bank of Russia on insufficient activity in checking out the laundering banks. The fact is that the service cannot do anything itself. Only Central Bank can execute the examination and revoke licenses. “We offered the Central Bank to do examinations together but got no response.” According to Zubkov, if they had such possibility, it would have been possible to avoid the situation with Sodbiznesnbank.
Kommersant will trace the events.
Vadim Visloguzov, Kirill Yacheistov
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 14, 2005
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