Security officer on how the FSB and the Central Bank cashed trillions

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Who helps budget embezzlers and criminal structures to launder money within the country and abroad? The answer to this question was given to PASMI by an ex-KGB officer, chief of operational work of a special "banking group" of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This structure was created on behalf of the president to eliminate the illegal market for cashing out money, through which trillions of rubles pass.

But as soon as the employees approached the arrests of the "black" financiers, they themselves went to jail. About the role in this case of the head of the TFR Alexander Bastrykin, FSB general Ivan Tkachev and the mysterious protégé of Yaponchik - Yevgeny Dvoskin - in an exclusive interview with a direct participant in the "wars of the siloviki".

Dmitry Tselyakov- an employee of the KGB of the USSR, who ensured the personal safety of the country's top officials, an officer of the Ministry of Internal Affairs who was at the origins of the fight against illegal banking operations, ended his career as a law enforcement officer behind bars. In 2010 he was convicted of extortion 1.5 million euros two bankers - Herman Gorbuntsov and Petra Chuvilina … Moreover, immediately after that, a criminal case was opened against Gorbuntsov about fraud using fake bank bills, and now the connection between the financier and the billionaire colonel is being investigated. Dmitry Zakharchenko … Chuvilin received four years in prison in 2016 for a scam for $ 5 million in the banking sector. But Tselyakov himself is sure: the true reasons for his elimination are associated with high-ranking security officials who cover the illegal cash market, and Gorbuntsov and Chuvilin were used as a screen.

But this article is not about whether the security officer was framed or not. Exclusive materials have been published, including wiretaps, letters from the FBI, financial monitoring certificates and documents from official correspondence, which, in response to criminal pressure, were provided by an operative with special powers. Details of the military wars of the 2000s are in the story of Dmitry Tselyakov:

Bank Burner Catchers

“I ended up in the Ninth Directorate of the KGB, which was engaged in the protection of the leaders of the party and government, right after the army. In the 90s, he was the personal bodyguard of the first president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev and the President of the Constitutional Court Valeria Zorkina.

He got into the field of banking operations already in the 2000s. Then, in the Department of Economic Security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a new department was created to control foreign investments and foreign exchange transactions, and I was appointed to the position of deputy head.

The first major cases in which I took part and where I understood how the money laundering mechanism works were the cases of the banks Rodnik and AKA-Bank. In 2004, they were among the pioneers among credit institutions, whose license was revoked for violating the law on laundering. Through "Rodnik" for 8 months with a capital of 20 million rubles was cashed 75 billion … This is about 6-7 annual budgets of our regions, I will give specific figures: the budget of the Tula region for 2004 - somewhere 11.2 billion rubles., Yaroslavskaya - 10, 1 billion rubles., Ryazan 7.5 billion rubles.

The money was written off under the pretext of charity - for the purchase of insulin. Even more passed through AKA-Bank - something in the area 114 billion rubles.

Supervised this scheme through the KB "New Economic Position" (NEP-Bank), which united a chain of other banks, Boris Sokalsky - an inconspicuous secretary of the Moscow Arbitration Court, which accumulated funds from one-day firms. He himself called them "trash heaps".

Although he was not the only one who worked in this market: I can count about a dozen large organized criminal communities. They acted as the second financial system of the Russian Federation, only "black". All its participants had their own benefit: the ultimate beneficiaries avoided paying taxes, and the performers received a tax from the turnover: in the early 2000s, it was about 1-2% from the amount of the transaction, and then the rates increased to 5-7and sometimes 10%.

The general principle is this: banks were bought out or squeezed out of the owners, and then they were "burned", pumping money until the institution's license was revoked. Methodology is already a secondary issue: methods have always been found - the appearance of charity, counterfeit checks, bills of exchange, securities and the like.

For you to understand the amount of funds, I will say that one bank could cash out a day before $ 1 million, and, in general, for the "life cycle" - up to $ 100-150 billion … This is a real "parallel" budget of Russia, comparable to the national GDP. It is the “black” banking system that allows not only to plunder the Russian budget, which is almost always expressed in “non-cash”, but also to provide financing for any terrorist act, since there is no control, and there are a lot of interested persons in the existence of the system.

The Sokalsky case showed how strong his patrons are: due to the opposition of the system, we managed to detain the banker only in March 2007, that is, three years after collecting all the evidence.

Under a secure roof

Everyone always knew about illegal banking operations and still knows about it - the Central Bank, the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor General's Office, the Investigative Committee, the Federal Tax Service, etc. There is no conspiracy theory here, I'm telling you this from the standpoint of common sense … well, based on the materials of hundreds of wiretaps.

All major banks in Russia and the Central Bank are donors for laundering banks, so it is not difficult to track the flows. But this is not done on purpose, because this is how the money of Russian Railways, oil companies, and all the mighty of this world pass. Yukos also worked.

And imagine how you can conduct an investigation with such a roof ?! You see: all banks were covered with roofs, including the beneficiaries. It is not difficult to look at the statistics of past years: Dagestan was at one time in second place in terms of the concentration of banks after Moscow, and then St. Petersburg. And what, no one saw that the Caucasus in Russia is not a financial and business center?

If we talk about the "blindness" of the controlling structures: in 2005 I sent a request to the head of the Federal Tax Service of Russia, then this place was occupied by Anatoly Serdyukov … And what do you think the tax office ran to look for where they wrote off 75 billion for insulin? Not! Everyone is absolutely on a drum, because if they start to figure it out, the entire economy of the Russian Federation will stop. But what about the good life abroad? The main thing is to report on GDP growth and wait for oil to cost $ 200.

I handed over reports on operational developments personally to the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, I still have my channels from the days of my work in the KGB, but, apparently, this was not enough. We were untied our hands only after the murder of the Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank in September 2006 Andrey Kozlov, who apparently somehow tried to revive this "black" sector. Apparently, he no longer trusted anyone from law enforcement agencies, special services and the Bank of Russia, and moved by inertia, revoking licenses from banks. But the demand for illegal banking operations left him with only three options - resignation, jail, or murder.

Of course, the murder of Kozlov made a lot of noise and produced the effect of shock therapy. The president was very unhappy at that time and gave a personal order to figure it out, then he still paid great attention to the fight against money laundering. By order of the Minister of the Interior Rashida Nurgalieva an investigative-operational group was formed. Then the media gave it the name " banking group". It was headed by a senior investigator for particularly important cases of the Investigative Committee under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, Colonel of Justice Gennady Shantin … In this group, I was responsible for the entire operational part.

I met Gennady Aleksandrovich in the summer of 2005, when I submitted materials on the Rodnik bank for assessment to the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. Nobody undertook to investigate this case, there was no practice, we ourselves did not know how many pitfalls it conceals, what all these investigations will lead to, and to what extent we will eventually make progress, what we will understand. However, the criminal cases were then initiated not by the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, but by the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Biryukov Yuri Stanislavovich and he saw that there would be a good deal, so we need to thank him for setting the stage for this case and for our global investigation, unprecedented in the history of the Russian Federation, the results of which are still relevant today.

The Trillions Case

By the time the "banking group" was officially formed, in parallel with the OPS of Sokalsky, we already conducted the so-called "trillions" - these are the largest OPSs at that time, built into the state power of the Russian Federation - Jumber Elbakidze (nickname Juba) and his partner Sergey Zakharov named "Red", Evgeniya Dvoskina and Ivan Myazin, Alexey Kulikov, Pavel Verteletsky (nickname "Pasha helicopter") and others, whose names are not even known to the public.

Very, very serious conversations got to the PTP (telephone wiretapping). So, immediately after the assassination of the deputy chairman of the Central Bank Kozlov, a citizen nicknamed "Flamingo" called Juba's mobile phone and said the following: "I spoke with the FSB of Russia and will be responsible for the murder Alexey Frenkel, even if it has nothing to do with it, since it is currently the weakest link in the entire system."

Shantin interrogated Frenkel in March 2007, but his lawyer Igor Trunov raised a fuss that we want to bring Frenkel to criminal liability under part 2 of article 172 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “illegal banking”, and the conversation did not work out. Although neither I nor Shantin had the desire to play on his bones, we already had enough objects.

In 2006, we were ready to arrest Elbakidze, but I was removed from the case, and only when the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs personally intervened Andrey Novikov, I was reinstated, but time has passed - Elbakidze fled to Georgia.

After that, our group came to grips with Dvoskin, Myazin and Kulikov, who took the place of the "kings of the golden mountain." Myazin called himself that, after Juba left for warm countries. Their OPS focused not only on officials of the FSB of Russia, the Bank of Russia, beneficiaries with direct access to the president, but also on the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Central Federal District - Nikolae Aulove … This was revealed in November 2006 during the ORM for the Migros bank.

The bank was transferred from Dagestan to "incineration" and registered in the Fifth Main Territorial Administration controlled by the criminal community, which headed Alexander Korneshov from the staff of the seconded officers of the FSB of Russia. For two years I had to communicate with him in order to smoothly cut off the gangs and not to raise another, as the media likes to write, the fight of "bulldogs under the carpet." He was caught right away at the Rodnik bank: it didn’t even have a cash unit! And how, one wonders, was the inspection of the GTU of the Bank of Russia and the Ministry of Internal Affairs conducted there?

Moreover, the supervising authorities could not but know where and who “burns” the bank, since practically the same persons appear everywhere, including in the acts of the Bank of Russia. For example, in the banks of Myazin and Dvoskin - "Belkom", "Falcone", the bank "Project Lending" and others, a certain Stepanova … Of course, I spoke to her during interrogation. She explained that if she cooperates, she will be killed or imprisoned, and she has children. Unfortunately, we have faced this situation since the first day.

We cut out the gangs without touching the beneficiaries, it didn’t work in any other way - if you touch them too, then imagine what resource will fall on you from forty credit institutions that “burned out”. In principle, I followed the same path as Kozlov. I’m not a fool, and I understand very well that the more I crush the gangs, the stronger their coalition is: everyone is interested in removing me and, of course, will immediately go to the rooftops. The question was what the authorities themselves would choose when this fight would take place. But the choice was not in my favor …

10 years have passed since my removal: now Ivan Myazin has been arrested in connection with the embezzlement of 3.2 billion rubles from Promsberbank, Alexey Kulikov received nine years, and Evgeny Dvoskin is still at large, and on his figure I would like to draw the special attention of your readers.

Between the FBI and the FSB

Dvoskin is a notorious banker who is related to a whole group of "burnt" banks - Rubin, Antares, Kreditimpexbank, Falcon, Migros, Sibisky Development Bank, Falcon and others. In September 2007, we received a certificate from Finmonitoring, which confirmed its connection with illegal banking operations and money laundering.

It was a great operational success to establish his real identity. After all, Dvoskin was something like "Mr. X" in the financial market, he appeared already at a time when the roles of leaders were long divided. It was known that he was born in Odessa, in the 70s he emigrated with his mother to America, and in the 2000s he found himself in Russia. Our group with Shantin managed to fill in the black spots in his biography. It turned out that Dvoskin inherited not only in Russia, but also in the United States: the FBI was looking for him for similar reasons - financial fraud, but the searches were conducted by his last name Slusker … We received an exhaustive dossier through Interpol.

It became clear where the connection between Dvoskin-Slusker and the "thief in law" was coming from Vyacheslav Ivankov, known under the nickname Yaponchik - they met in an American prison, where they were cellmates. I think that this was not an accident: I have data that Dvoskin was something like informant of the American intelligence services. Then the FBI will send a request for its extradition, but the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation will not take any decision.

Our group also managed to establish that Dvoskin's Russian citizenship is a forgery, although he stubbornly denies this. Dvoskin assures that in the 90s he registered in Rostov and received a passport there. But the entry in the house book - "Evgeny Vladimirovich Dvoskin" - was made explicitly in hindsight, since at the time of registration he was still Slusker. He changed his last name only in 2002. It's just that the girl who entered him there somehow forgot that in the 90s he was a Slusker.

There was also a witness Tropinina, who confessed that she had made Dvoskin's registration for money. Based on the amount of evidence collected, in September 2007, we managed to obtain permission to search the banker's house, during which a pistol and 70 cartridges were seized.

By November, the arrest of Dvoskin and Myazin was being prepared, but their roof in the person of Nikolai Aulov was connected to the case, Alexandra Bastrykina and Department "M" of the FSB of Russia, as well as, previously unknown to us, the 6th service of the Internal Security Service of the FSB of Russia.

Bastrykin's move

From Dvoskin, the chairman of the UPC of Russia, Bastrykin, made a victim to remove me and Shantin and play politics with Aulov, who wanted to take the post of Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, and other generals suffering from chairs and scalps.

On November 26, 2007, from Shantin's office, they suddenly seized the case on the Dagestan banks where Dvoskin was held, and they also took away materials on the search of his house and all material evidence. The seizure was carried out by special forces of the FSB, representatives of the Moscow headquarters of the UPC and several employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In Shantin's report, you can read that these materials were practically confiscated from us. by force.

Shantin's report was sent to Alexander Bastrykin, in 2007 he was the chairman of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation. It was Bastrykin who was in charge of the case Alexander Sharkevich, within the framework of which the papers were seized.

Who is Sharkevich? in 2007, I still did not know the answer to this question. He worked under the pseudonym Solovyov, in addition to Nurgaliev, a very limited circle of people knew about his real tasks: under the guise of a corrupt law enforcement officer, he worked to expose corruption in the highest authorities, among other things, he developed "laundering" banks, and was a direct subordinate of the Minister of Internal cases.

Dvoskin accused Sharkevich of extortion of money, which he supposedly had to share with our "banking" group. Bastrykin took the side of the mafia.

At the trial, the jury did not believe Dvoskin's version and acquitted Alexander Sharkevich, but someone needed him to sit down, and the lieutenant colonel was accused on a ridiculous reason - possession of ammunition for the award weapon, which he received for preventing a terrorist attack in the center of Moscow.

At the trial, Sharkevich did not confirm Dvoskin's words about his connection with me and Gennady Shantin. But in 2008, according to the statement of the heads of the Moscow "Inkredbank" Chuvilin and Gorbuntsov against me and my colleague Alexandra Nosenko nevertheless, a criminal case was opened in which Dvoskin was a witness.

I would also like to say about the role of the FSB in this process: from the moment Dvoskin began to testify against Shantin, he came under state protection and was engaged in his protection Ivan Tkachev - Deputy Head of the 6th Service of the Internal Security Service of the FSB of Russia. And then Tkachev will "light up" in Chuvilin's conversations. In May 2008, the banker complained to the deputy head of the "M" Department of the FSB of Russia Igor Nikolaevthat Ivan Ivanovich is forcing him to commit actions against me and Nosenko. The conversation was recorded during ORM.

Is the mafia immortal?

As a result, Nosenko and I ended up in prison, the "banking" group was ruined, all our operational developments were buried, as were the criminal cases. Dvoskin overturned the court's decision to invalidate his citizenship and managed to pull off a scam with the Crimean Genbank, which was left with a hole of 15 billion rubles. Federal media wrote that the Central Bank tried to somehow prevent the expansion of the bank's network in Crimea because of the reputation of its shareholder Dvoskin, but the banker's political connections prevailed. However, I don’t believe that the Bank of Russia cannot do something, it’s just that everyone has a share.

The black bankers' side is backed up by various beneficiaries whose money flows through the system. The resource, one might say, is unlimited, and no one wants to change the economic model. The revocation of licenses from banks is only a recognition that there is no supervision, control and everyone is interested in this at the state level. Where else would they get cash, houses, yachts and real estate abroad?

Of course, in one article I cannot tell everything in detail, but I want to publish a series of books about the real Russian reality. The mosaic itself will stick together and highlight those who shouted loudest about my arrest as a fight against corruption."