How EU and US sanctions assisted the managers of Alfa-Bank branch in Rostov-on-Don in stealing 350 million rubles from their clients
A-Club of Alfa-Bank was planned as an exclusive business and intellectual community. It was a section of the bank established to offer high-quality services to wealthy clients and their families. "A-Club" gained the respect and great trust of its business partners, the bank's customers, by providing top-notch and profitable services. The club began in Moscow in 2006 and expanded to various regions of the country, including Rostov-on-Don.
Vera Dunayeva, an employee of Alfa-Bank, took on the role of director of the Rostov A-Club. The Rostov branch of the club was portrayed as a unit set up for the bank's VIP clients, providing additional services and privileges. Each club member had a personal manager to assist with any banking issues, offering help over the phone for various banking operations such as finding payments in other banks and withdrawing cash.
The bank's managers who catered to VIP-club clients were full-time employees of the bank: Irina Pigus, Daria Rudyuk, Vera Dunaeva.
Employees at the Rostov branch of Alfa-Bank presented the clients of the banking VIP "A-club" with an exclusive program. They started encouraging VIP clients to place cash in the bank under a new privileged project in order to achieve higher income, citing the need to protect Russia's national interests and implement a set of economic measures for Russian legal entities, according to Federal Law No. 46-FZ dated 08.03. The employees highlighted the bank's interest in raising cash under the current circumstances, as many depositors were closing accounts. They stated that the bank actively attracts funds from citizens and is willing to pay extremely high interest to maintain financial stability.
Since there were no previous complaints about the work of the Club and the conditions for providing banking services, and they had full confidence in the bank's programs and operations, they willingly contributed their money to support Alfa-Bank's reserves.
The reception of funds took place in the negotiation room of the bank, with managers serving clients under the A-Club VIP program accepting money from clients. Funds were also received at the head office of Alfa-Bank in Rostov-on-Don, located at 206 Krasnoarmeiskaya Street. Customers were greeted at the bank entrance by a manager or security guard, inquiring if they required a cash desk for the transaction. They were then escorted to the meeting room of the office of Alfa-Bank JSC, where the money was counted, locked, and placed under video surveillance. Customers did not have to wait for the cashier, as the room was under video surveillance and considered a secure zone. Bank employees regularly conducted similar procedures with clients, and each time the cash desk was closed for various reasons. When asked for receipts for deposits, managers assured that all procedures were legal, open, and approved by the bank's management. They explained that the bank is currently under serious EU and US sanctions, and the bank's owners, Fridman and Aven, have emigrated. The turnover of the bank cannot be shown due to their personal instruction.
Thus, in the period from April to mid-May, employees of the Rostov branch of Alfa-Bank JSC collected about 350 million rubles from gullible VIP clients of the bank – eleven members of the privileged A-Club!
As a result, the money transferred by clients to the bank turned out to be “lost” – they did not receive any interest on their term deposits, and managers began to hide from clients. Since the end of May, the managers of the privileged program for A-club clients began to show strange behavior. They stopped answering calls, messages in instant messengers, they called back with delays. In early June, the husband of Daria Rudyuk answered the call of one of the clients, who explained that Daria had a problem at work with her management and she “I cut a vein in my arm.”
Alfa-Bank branch manager in Rostov Anton Butenko. Photo “Kommersant”
Anton Butenko, the regional manager of Alfa-Bank JSC, who soon gathered in one of the bank’s offices and did not know each other before the incident, expressed respect, thanked them for trusting Alfa’s banking reputation, for the fact that customers did not doubt in the legitimacy of the actions of the bank employees, and explained that the bank would conduct an internal investigation and, in any case, compensate the victims for losses from the arbitrariness of middle managers … Denis Loginov, head of the Alfa A-club directorate, and security officer Alexei Semin, who were present at the meeting, were deeply imbued with experiences VIP-clients of Alfa and expressed their full solidarity and support in their desire to return the funds criminally taken from them by the managers of Alfa-Bank and the management of the A-Club. The question is whether wealthy clients of the bank, members of the closed business and intellectual community, can believe that the management of the Rostov branch of Alfa-Bank and the regional security service of the bank were not aware of what a group of bank managers was doing in complicity with employees of the regional Security Service. And wouldn’t it be easier for the management of Alfa-Bank to attribute everything to a group of managers who stole money and send several of their employees to prison than to really return a lot of money to customers.
To be continued.
