How "Black Lenders" squeeze out half a thousand Moscow apartments

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

In Moscow and its suburbs, there are “black creditors” - microfinance organizations (MFOs) that deceive the debtors' homes.

Meduza managed to find about 500 apartments lost by their owners over the past five years - without a court order. However, the scheme is not limited to a simple "squeezing" of living space: it may be just one of the elements of the international money laundering system. Meduza's special correspondent Ivan Golunov has found out how this market works.

In the summer of 2015, an employee of a Moscow consulting company, Natalia Smelnitskaya, was diagnosed with cancer. Despite receiving a government quota, she needed additional money for the operation. She took out a consumer loan for three years in the amount of 2.7 million rubles at a rate of 36% per annum from Sovcombank - with a monthly payment of 80 thousand rubles. The operation was successful.

Natalia regularly made payments on the loan, but she was embarrassed by the high rate. A colleague advised her to refinance from private moneylenders. She agreed with the Loan Center 365 company to refinance her loan at a lower rate - 28% for a year, but on the security of her four-room apartment on the Yaroslavskoe highway.

According to Natalia, at the time of signing the documents, the company's employees created an artificial fuss: she was rushed when she read the documents; from a pile of signed papers, the manager took out sheets and said that the contract was spoiled; printed the page again and asked to sign again. For about six months, Natalia paid 80 thousand a month, but once she was delayed by several days due to the fact that she was not given her salary on time.

On the evening of December 26, 2016, Natalia received a doorbell. An employee of the 365 Loan Center, Anton Titov, said that due to the delay, her apartment now belongs to the 365 Loan Center. However, he reassured Natalia Titov, she can stay in it until she returns the loan - you just need to conclude an apartment lease agreement. 35 thousand rubles every month was required to transfer to a bank card of a certain Natalia Kovaleva (later it turned out that she works in the real estate agency "United City Real Estate Service"). Natalia tried to contact the 365 Loan Center; the company phones did not answer. Smelnitskaya's employer, having learned about her problems, tried to pay off her loan - and could not do it: the money was returned from the company's account.

Already in February 2017, the "365 Loan Center" sold the apartment to Smelnitskaya, and in August 2017, Smelnitskaya lost the lawsuit to evict her family from the apartment. In addition to Natalia, her ex-husband and two daughters, 13 and 22 years old, were registered in the apartment. The guardianship authorities did not object to the eviction of the minor daughter.

In December 2018, bailiffs came to evict the family. During the eviction, the interests of the new owner were represented by his mother - the owner of the apartment himself is in jail on suspicion of illegal possession of drugs, Smelnitskaya said (this was confirmed by Meduza's source in law enforcement agencies). After the family was evicted, their belongings remained in the apartment, it was sealed. A few days later, Smelnitskaya stopped by her neighbors and found that the seals were torn off, and sounds came from the apartment - as if someone was breaking furniture. A police squad was called in and detained several people who claimed to have helped with the removal of things.

Now the apartment where Smelnitskaya lived is sealed again. The Internal Affairs Directorate of the Central District of Moscow (where the office of the "Loan Center 365" was located) is conducting a pre-investigation check on the fraud. At the same time, in Mytishchi, a criminal case under the article “Fraud” has already been opened against the “365 Loan Center” - although it has not ended in anything yet, and the regional prosecutor's office has tried several times to close it.

How "leftist" credit schemes work

Loan Center 365 is not the only company that has dealt with similar rental schemes; Meduza managed to find several dozen similar offices. As a rule, such enterprises operate no more than one and a half years, and then a new legal entity is registered. According to Meduza's estimates, at least 500 families have lost their homes in this way in Moscow and the Moscow region.

Their stories are pretty much the same. During the signing of the documents for the issuance of a loan secured by real estate, the client signs a mortgage on an apartment or an apartment sale and purchase agreement. Borrowers are told that this is something like a mortgage (sometimes called leasing) - when the apartment is pledged to the bank until the loan is paid in full. However, the scheme is fundamentally different from a bank mortgage, where, after delays in payments and visits by collectors, an apartment is taken by a court decision, and then sold at auction at the maximum price. In the case of microfinance companies, at the stage of obtaining a loan, the victims sign powers of attorney and documents that can deprive them of property rights without a court decision: the apartment is transferred to intermediaries, the client is left with nothing.

Victims of "black lenders" rarely managed to get their apartments back. For example, one borrower was diagnosed with schizophrenia, on the basis of which the judge declared the transaction with the incapacitated person null and void. In one of the cases, which ended well for the borrower, the court's decision almost completely repeated the stories of other victims: them to sign the agreed documents and an agreement on compensation [for the apartment]. However, the plaintiff did not intend to transfer the apartment to the defendant, which is also evidenced by the lack of consent of his wife,”the Dorogomilovsky District Court found, which declared the agreement on the compensation for the apartment invalid. The court's decision in favor of the victim is probably due to his high social status: a source of Meduza who is familiar with the case says that the plaintiff is a veteran of the special services.

Even those clients who are not overdue are losing their real estate. Svetlana Podelskaya's beloved dacha burned down, the children promised to help with the restoration. But she decided to take the situation into her own hands and applied for a loan for 600 thousand rubles on the security of her apartment at the International Credit Bureau (ICB) in Brateevo, which she found through advertising on the Internet. She repaid the loan on a monthly basis, and a year and a half later her manager from MKB called her and said that the company provided her as a “good borrower” with “credit holidays” for two months. In the third month, she started paying again. But soon a man appeared on the threshold of her apartment, introducing himself as the new owner of the apartment. The MKB manager denied that he had called her, she did not have any supporting documents about the "credit holidays" - and the loan agreement stated that in the event of a two-month delay in payments, the collateral property becomes the property of the company. A similar story happened with several other borrowers of the International Credit Bureau.

Podelskaya's apartment was sold to the unemployed Denis Baluev. At the trial, Baluev was asked to show the source of funds for the purchase of housing. He refused for a long time, but then brought an additional agreement to the loan agreement with the microfinance company Stolichnye Kredy (the document is at Meduza's disposal). The loan amount is not indicated in it; the loan was issued at an unusually low rate of 14%. The Stolichnye Kredy company shares its legal address with MKB, and is headed by one of the employees of the International Credit Bureau, a citizen of Latvia, Ivan Dubina. All three founders of Capital Loans are also Latvian citizens. At the address of the office of MKB and Capital Loans, several more companies are registered - also owned by Latvian citizens, employees of MKB, each of which has its own functionality. For example, in favor of Mosarenda LLC, as a rule, the rights to the borrower's real estate are alienated.

The court hearings in the Podelskaya case continue. At one of the sessions of the Nagatinsky court, where the case is being heard, Alexander Loginov, by proxy, came as a representative of the buyer of her apartment, Denis Baluev. He is well known to many borrowers: it was Loginov who supervised the forced eviction of the debtors of MKB and the "365 Loan Center" from their former apartments. In December 2018, Loginov was tried under several articles, including for arbitrariness and deliberate harm to health of mild and moderate severity, and sentenced to one and a half years in a penal colony. Loginov's daughter Galina Kiev previously worked as an employee of Rosreestr, where she was engaged in the execution of real estate transactions, and since the beginning of the 2010s, she has been the chairman of the arbitration court for economic disputes. It was the arbitration court that was mentioned as a place for resolving disputes between borrowers and ICD in the early years of the existence of this scheme.

Of all the companies that issued loans secured by real estate that Meduza managed to find, the International Credit Bureau leads in the number of victims. Former clients discovered 99 cases when the borrower of the company lost an apartment, in several more cases it was not possible to find former homeowners who took out loans from MKB. The main clientele of such enterprises is aged people, deprived of the attention of relatives, and representatives of other socially unprotected groups. Even in more prosperous situations, credit managers try to create discord in relations with relatives. Svetlana Podelskaya recalls that managers advised her not to tell her children about the loan, arguing that young people have a negative attitude towards loans, and the amount is small. Podelskaya's sons found out that their mother had applied to a microfinance organization only when neighbors called them, saying that the door to her apartment was being cut off by representatives of the new owner.

Often, relatives cannot independently find out that the apartment is pledged on a loan. Microfinance organizations do not register collateral data with Rosreestr. Actor Sergei Frolov, whose story was actively discussed in March 2019, found out about his mother's loan a few years after her death - after discovering that the apartment he inherited had been sold at auction. It turned out that his mother, before her death, took out a loan from MKB for 600 thousand at 28% per annum. She could not afford it: her pension would not have been enough to pay off the monthly payment; in the package of documents for obtaining a loan there is a certificate of income with an amount that significantly exceeds the amount of her pension. The elderly woman was unable to pay the payments on time, therefore, to pay off the debt, she was offered to issue a loan for 1.2 million rubles on the security of an apartment. After the death of Frolov's mother, representatives of the ICB recognized the debt as irrecoverable and received an apartment in return.

What does Latvia have to do with it

A smiling credit manager Sergei with a Baltic accent Podjelskaya recognizes from a photograph in the Latvian business newspaper Dienas Bizness, where an interview with the head of West Kredit Sergei Malikov (the Latvian version of the name - Sergejs Malikovs) was published under the heading “Losing ABLV, we are losing the best . In an interview, Malikov criticizes the policy of the Latvian government towards banks in which accounts of citizens from the countries of the former USSR are opened. “This is geopolitics. Nowadays, Americans do not allow citizens of the former USSR - Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians - to feel comfortable with their money. It should be understood that this action was not directed against the shareholders of any bank, but against its clients, who wanted to restrict it, - he said. - What is the model of these non-resident banks? Money is collected from the territory of the former USSR simply because it is calm and quiet here. They are invested in securities, or loans are issued to the same non-residents who do not want to take loans from a Scandinavian bank. They want to eliminate this model”.

In February 2018, the US Treasury Department for Combating Financial Crimes (FinCEN) announced plans to impose sanctions against the Latvian ABLV Bank, one of the three largest credit institutions in the country, for money laundering, assistance to the North Korean nuclear program and illegal activities in Azerbaijan, Russia and in Ukraine. FinCEN also said that the bank's management gave bribes to influence officials in Latvia.

A week after the application, the bank began the liquidation procedure - and the Latvian authorities demanded that banks reduce the share of non-resident clients. According to the regulator, 36.7% of all banking operations in Latvia are performed by offshore companies; among those opened by non-residents, this share is even higher - 44.5%. Latvian banks were an important part of the scheme to withdraw money from Russia. An investigation by Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP called Laundromat described a scheme by which more than $ 18 billion was withdrawn from Russia in three years. The clients of Latvian banks were mainly Russians who could not open accounts in Switzerland and other more prestigious jurisdictions.

One of the biggest victims of the policy to reduce non-resident accounts was Rietumu Bank, whose assets in nine months decreased by 46.3%, or 1.441 billion euros, to 1.674 billion euros. The fifth largest bank in Latvia Rietumu (translated from Latvian - "Western") was established in 1992. The main owners are actually one family: Leonid Esterkin and Arkady Sukharenko, who is married to Esterkin's sister.

Sergey Malikov is the founder of the microfinance company Mateks Credit, which since 1995 has been issuing loans secured by real estate in Latvia (later renamed West Kredit). The main lender of Mateks Credit was the same bank Rietumu, which opened a credit line for the company in 2008 for 20 million lats (approximately 28 million euros), in 2011 issued an additional loan for eight million euros, and in 2016 - for another 24 million euros.

According to the reports, Mateks Credit received loans not only from banks. In 2009, the company received a loan of 1.1 million euros at 10% per annum from the British company Adovert Consult LLP, according to West Kredit's 2011 annual report. According to the UK registry, Adovert Consult was established a few months before the loan was disbursed - and was liquidated shortly after the loan was repaid. Its owners were identified two offshore companies from Belize - Advance Developments Limited and Corporate Solutions Limited, which appeared in several investigations into the network of British companies through which $ 2.9 billion was laundered - this money came from the countries of the former USSR.

As in Russia, the work of Mateks Credit in Latvia was accompanied by scandals related to the forced eviction of debtors. In one of the cases, to "clean" the living space, Mateks hired a security company, whose employees broke into the house of a pregnant woman and sprayed pepper gas; in another case, they dismantled the windows and doors in the house in order to evict the tenants. In the late 2000s, a reputational crisis began around the company; in addition, the state Consumer Rights Protection Center (the Latvian analogue of Rospotrebnadzor) made claims against it, and the legislation on the issuance of loans was also tightened.

In 2011, Malikov and two other Latvian citizens created in Russia a company called the International Credit Bureau - the very same ICB, which was engaged in issuing "left-wing" loans to Muscovites on the security of their apartments. Another founder of the ICB, Andis Anspox, in the 2000s in Riga was the secretary of the public organization “For a Latvian Society without Homosexuals”. One of the founders of the organization was lawyer Andris Baumanis, whom the Latvian police suspected of bribing a judge.

The apartments of the first Russian borrowers of MKB were transferred to the personal property of Malikov, and, according to Rosreestr, he immediately pledged them to Rietumu Bank as security for a personal loan of 750 thousand dollars. In 2013, Rietumu opened a credit line for 20 million euros to the Russian company International Credit Bureau, it follows from the documents that Meduza has at its disposal. Rietumu Bank did not answer Meduza's questions.

The meetings of the owners of the Russian company MKB, according to the documents, were held in Riga in a building at Elizabetes Street 8. According to the Latvian trade register, Malikov is the owner of Elizabetes 8, which is engaged in real estate management. Malikov's partner in this company is the former deputy head of the economic police of Riga, Nil Zhuravlev, who left office after a corruption scandal related to the acquisition of expensive real estate and a car during his civil service. After his resignation, Zhuravlev headed the Latvian Boxing Federation and several times put forward his candidacy in regional elections. Sergei Malikov is also interested in politics: in particular, he financed the Social Democratic Party "Consent", which is headed by the former mayor of Riga, Nil Ushakov. Malikov did not find time to answer Meduza's questions.

Back to Russia

The International Credit Bureau has a lot in common with another credit institution, the Moscow Pledge Company (MZK), which operates on similar principles. In the fall of 2016, videos from a meeting appeared on YouTube, at which they discussed how to explain to the client the need to sign a mortgage on an apartment - and give him an incomplete copy of the loan agreement. The name of the company is not mentioned on the video, however, the Moscow Pledge Company through the court obtained the blocking of the video on the territory of Russia. It is impossible to see the face of the employee who gave the briefing, but several clients of the MZK, with whom Meduza spoke, claim that it is Nikolai Chigarev, deputy general director of the MZK.

In 2015, both companies began to frequently appear in the media: there were enough defrauded debtors for a public scandal. MKB and MZK filed lawsuits to the courts for the protection of honor and dignity (including against TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov), but they lost over and over again. In November 2015, the offshore company Lordena Ventures, registered in the British Virgin Islands, became the owner of the MZK.

The organization is featured in an OCCRP investigation into the Panama Papers, based on leaked documents from the registration company Mossack Fonseca. According to the documents, Lordena Ventures had a representative office in Latvia: the office was located in the building of Rietumu Bank in Riga, and Oksana Utenkova, an employee of the bank, was named as the company's representative.

As it turned out from this investigation, Utenkova was a representative of more than one and a half thousand offshore companies, whose offices were registered in the bank building. One of these companies appeared in corruption schemes between the Swedish division of the Bombardier engineering corporation and the Azerbaijani authorities. Soon after the publication of the Panama Papers, Rietumu Bank blocked the accounts of suspicious companies and announced that Oksana Utenkova no longer works at the bank.

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, two days after the publication of the Panama Archives, Lordena Ventures renounced its stake in the MZK. Today, Konstantin Ilyin is listed as the main owner of the MZK (through November Holdings LLC). The Oktyabr Holdings company, owned by his son, Alexander Ilyin, is registered at the same address. Since 2016, Ilyin Jr. has been working as Deputy General Director of the investment company VEB Capital, owned by the state corporation Vnesheconombank. One of VEB's projects was the reorganization of Globex Bank, its subsidiary investment company Globex Capital, and a number of other projects. Ilyin, as a representative of VEB, was a member of the boards of directors of the watch factory "Slava" (a development project at the beginning of Leningradsky Prospekt) and the Orenburg poultry farm "Uralsky Broiler". In May 2015, Vnesheconombank's management decided to sell 50% of Globex Capital to Oktyabr Holdings, owned by Nikolai Chigarev, Deputy General Director of MZK - and a few months later, Alexander Ilyin became the owner of Oktyabr Holdings.

“Alexander Ilyin was fired in the summer of 2018. VEB. The Russian Federation has nothing to do with the business of issuing microcredits to individuals,”a VEB representative explained to Meduza. рф (new name of Vnesheconombank).

The last mention of Globex Capital in the media is related to the company's plans to purchase an office building of Rostelecom on Zubovskaya Square (the deal did not take place). In the summer of 2018, the company posted an advertisement for the vacancy of a lawyer, among the job duties it was mentioned: “Representing the company's interests in courts in cases of debt collection under loan agreements (mortgage lending), on the recognition of property rights; appeal against the actions of officials, including bailiffs”.

In November 2017, MZK CEO Igor Alekseev, MKB Deputy General Director Roman Guselnikov (he appeared in the video with a "briefing" for employees of credit companies) and West Bank president Ilya Krasnevsky were arrested on suspicion of fraud. The latter organization is 99% owned by the Cypriot offshore Westbanq Limited, which now owns the Russian MKB and the Latvian West Kredit. After the deoffshorization campaign in Latvia in 2018, Sergei Malikov admitted that he is the only beneficiary of Westbanq Limited.

Among the victims of the actions of Guselnikov, Alekseev and Krasnevsky is Elena Kulneva. She took out a loan from the Moscow Pledge Company, concluding an agreement for the sale and purchase of an apartment and its subsequent lease with Sergei Malikov. Kulneva lost the civil claim to invalidate the contract of sale of the apartment, but was recognized as a victim in the criminal fraud case. Another victim is a person who received a loan despite being diagnosed with schizophrenia by concluding an agreement to donate an apartment to Guselnikov (the very case when the deal was declared null and void in court; Meduza knows who this person is).

In March 2019, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow arrested four more employees of microfinance organizations that issued loans secured by real estate, Msk Group and Parnas - Oleg Chernega, Andrey Shkarlet, Yulia Lysak and Olesya Sukhareva. Both cases are being investigated by Stanislav Serebryakov, an investigator of the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee.

Sukhareva, like Guselnikov, figured in the deals concluded by MKB and MZK. At the arrest trial, Sukhareva said that she did not admit guilt and was only "a witness to the transfer of money." In the slang of employees of microfinance organizations (MFIs), they performed the function of a broker - an employee who searches for a client and supervises him until the transaction is concluded.

One of the channels for attracting Guselnikov's clients was Vash Broker, founded by him and Lyudmila Timashova. In 2017, after the initiation of criminal cases against Guselnikov, he left the founders, and the company, having changed its name to Pravoaktiv, now offers services for “writing off debts to banks and MFOs”. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the brother of Lyudmila Timashova, Yaroslav, owns the credit broker WinFin; earlier he owned another broker, United Credit Service. In some cases, Guselnikov also played the role of a "holder", registering for himself "problem" apartments before preparing them for sale.

Realty Capital Collateral Center, which offers loans secured by real estate, is now registered in the office of the Moscow Pledge Company. Its owner is realtor Maxim Lazykin, who has participated in a number of transactions related to MKB.

How microcredit organizations are related to each other

The average lifespan of a microfinance organization issuing loans secured by real estate is a year and a half. The cost of a ready-made microfinance company, already entered in the register of the Central Bank, is from 140 to 250 thousand rubles, depending on the history of the enterprise. Numerous advertisements for the sale of ready-made MFOs can be found on specialized forums. These companies change their names, but the staff of the company, "holders" and private investors, whose financing the company attracts for issuing loans, remains the same.

The Loan Center 365 company, where Smelnitskaya took out a loan, was founded in February 2016 by Anna Sukhanova. According to SPARK-Interfax, Sukhanova has established 21 microfinance companies. Meduza found advertisements for the sale of some of them on the Internet. A few months after registration, Anton Velichko and Latvian citizen Yulia Kalinina became the owners of the 365 Loan Center.

Smilnitskaya is one of the first borrowers of the 365 Loan Center, she signed an agreement at number four. Meduza found that from the summer of 2016 to February 2018, Loan Center 365 entered into at least 67 more loan agreements. Meduza checked the data on the property of the company's clients in the Rosreestr database: out of 37 borrowers, 25 sold their property shortly after receiving the loan. In 15 cases, Loan Center 365 became the new owner, two cases were attributed to the employee of the Center Anton Titov, the general director of M2-Leasing Anatoly Fundobny and the son of the managing director of the insurance company Capital Life Vladislav Snopok. According to the Moscow City Court's card index, Vladislav Snopok is the buyer of at least two more apartments that previously belonged to debtors of another microfinance organization, CreditFinance. Snopok did not answer Meduza's questions.

In the package of documents for Smelnitskaya's apartment, which the employees of the 365 Loan Center submitted to Rosreestr for its re-registration, by mistake there was a part of the documents for another apartment belonging to the debtor of another microfinance company Fast Loan. This company is headed by a 25-year-old citizen of Belarus Alina Pikulik. Previously, Pikulik was the "holder" of at least one apartment that previously belonged to the borrowers of "CreditFinance".

How is CreditFinance connected with other MFOs

Loan Center 365 also attracted not only borrowers, but also investors. On the no longer working website of the Center, potential investors were offered the following conditions: 18% per annum secured by mortgages on the real estate of the borrowers of the Center. From the documents that Meduza has at its disposal, it is known that, for example, Kirill Ryazanov, the son of the former deputy chairman of Gazprom, Alexander Ryazanov, took advantage of this offer. Another investor in Loan Center 365 is Sergey Zhitchenko, one of the largest entrepreneurs in the Ruzsky District. He owns several markets, retail real estate, popular restaurants, as well as the area around a large landfill in the Moscow region "Annino". The businessman has received most of his assets since 2014, when Maxim Tarkhanov, a lawyer from Tyumen, became the head of the Ruzsky District. At the beginning of 2019, Tarkhanov moved to work at the Moscow mayor's office, where he controls the work of district administrations.

Another investor in Loan Center 365, Yuri Dyachkov, director of retail business development at Finservice Bank, is also associated with the Ruzsky District. In 2017, Dyachkov, together with the administration of the Ruzsky district, created a support fund for the "All-Tsaritsa" church in the village of Novovolkovo. In addition, Dyachkov has his own business for issuing microloans - the North-West Partnership microcredit company, which is engaged in issuing loans through the website. Kirill Ryazanov, Sergei Zhitchenko and Yury Dyachkov did not answer Meduza's questions.

Anti-evict law

In early May, the HeadHunter website posted an advertisement for a vacancy "evict" with a salary of up to 160 thousand rubles. Among the main responsibilities: "Collecting overdue debt on a loan product with real estate pledge, organizing the eviction of debtors from the pledged object." The vacancy was posted by the microfinance organization Brighton Plus. The company calls itself one of the leaders in lending against real estate collateral, claiming to issue loans worth 100 million a month; among its advantages is “powerful financial support of the investor”. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the owners of the company are four people, for most of whom this organization is their first experience in business.

The Brighton Plus website is registered to another legal entity - Alfa Potential-M LLC, which also issues microloans. Among the owners of the company are Anatoly Gramakov, the owner of a network of cheap dormitories for workers "Medinar", and two young people with no business experience. In the company description in hh. ru it is indicated that she is also "the leader in lending secured by real estate" and "a joint project with Sovcombank". According to the database of pledges of the Federal Notary Chamber, both companies give mortgages to their clients' apartments as a pledge to Sovcombank. The bank pledges 86 mortgages for the apartments of the Brighton Plus clients and 272 for the Alfa Potential-M borrowers. “The companies have nothing to do with the beneficiaries of the bank, but they are the bank's clients. We do not comment on the relations and operations of clients due to banking secrecy, "said the press secretary of Sovcombank Daria Piven.

Some of the clients of these companies also lose their apartments. The Moscow City Court has registered 242 trials with the participation of Alfa Potential-M and the Brighton Plus MCC. In court hearings, the interests of "Alfa Potential-M" are represented by the lawyer Georgy Polyakov, who previously worked at the "Loan Center 365" and "CreditFinance".

Experts believe that the lack of regulation of this market contributes to the weaning of apartments through microfinance organizations. “For years, a comfortable regulatory regime has been built under MFOs - they did not set limits on the interest rate for borrowers, which exceeded 800% per annum. Legal regulation does not prevent microfinance organizations from using questionable income laundering schemes. Several years ago, the owner of an MFO was arrested, which was engaged in cashing maternity capital. The requirements of the Central Bank and control over the activities of more than two thousand MFOs are much lower than those for 473 banks,”said Dmitry Yanin, head of the International Confederation of Consumer Societies. "Microfinance organizations are subject to the law" On combating money laundering, "but the degree of control by the Central Bank and Rosfinmonitoring over their work is clearly lower than over banks," adds Rostislav Kokorev, head of the financial literacy laboratory at the Faculty of Economics at Moscow State University.

However, the situation seems to be starting to change. In April 2019, a bill was introduced to the Duma prohibiting microfinance organizations from issuing loans to individuals secured by real estate. Formally, these are amendments to the laws "On combating the legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime and the financing of terrorism" and "On microfinance activities and microfinance organizations." Judging by the list of co-authors, the bill has serious chances of passing: it was put forward, among others, by the speakers of both chambers of the Federal Assembly, Vyacheslav Volodin and Valentina Matvienko.