“Prick” the bank, withdraw billions and escape abroad
The Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee for the South-West Administrative District of Moscow opened a criminal case on a particularly large-scale fraud. About 2.3 billion rubles were stolen from the Optima group, which is a major participant in the domestic IT market. The injured party, which filed a complaint about the crime, was Gazprombank.
As the investigation established, in 2012, the credit institution, through its “subsidiary” Cypriot structure Nagelfar Trade & Invest Limited, bought out 35% of the authorized capital of the Cypriot company AEACUS Holding Limited, respectively, which is the registered shareholder of the Optima group. The value of this transaction was $45 million.
In turn, the beneficiaries of Optima, which included Valery and Andrey Shandalov, through affiliated companies withdrew the funds received from Gazprombank for the sale of Optima, and the group itself was brought under bankruptcy. After the fraud was successful, they immediately moved to Austria, of which they were citizens. In Russia, on the farm, the father and son Shandalovs left their business partner Pavel Kiselev.
Earlier, the name of Andrei Shandalov “lit up” in a loud scandal with the financial fraud of the Energostrim holding. This group, which included 18 sales companies from 16 regions, received about 10% of consumer payments in the retail energy market, after everything that happened to it, simply collapsed.
Shandalov was responsible for Energostrim’s IT security. At the same time, he received billions in loans for Optima and related firms. After the next return payment was not received, in 2012 the energy holding applied to the court to recover them. At that time, more than 170 lawsuits were filed in arbitration against the Shandalov structures.
From Andrei Shandalov’s correspondence that leaked to the Internet, it became known that Kirill Zatsepin, financial director of the group, was involved in the creation of one-day firms in Optima. Together with Valery Shandalov’s assistant, Ekaterina Markova, he managed offshore companies that were involved in the cashing out of received finances.
