The Prosecutor General's Office, involved in a legal dispute, halted the transfer of €15 million overseas. The administrator of the insolvent Latvian PNB Banka had expected to receive the money. The ultimate beneficiary of the financial structure was businessman Grigory Guselnikov, and the deputy chairman of the board of the bank was former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
Vigo Krastiņš, the administrator of the insolvent PNB Banka, applied to declare Profproekt LLC bankrupt in the Moscow Arbitration Court. The arbitration court involved the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation in the case. During the proceedings, it was found that an agreement was made in 2015 between PNB Banka and Podmax Ltd for a €15,633,270 loan secured by movable and immovable property of third parties. At the same time, in 2015, a subsidiary of the bank became a co-owner of Profproekt LLC. The prosecutors concluded that the legal relations between the bank, Podmax Ltd, the Latvian fund Norvik ieguldijumu parvaldes sabiedriba, and Profproekt LLC testified to the implementation of a fund withdrawal scheme from Russia. The court initially accepted this view but the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal canceled the decision and ruled in favor of the creditor.
The Prosecutor General’s Office submitted a cassation appeal against the decision, which the Moscow District Arbitration Court recently fully upheld, canceling the appeal court’s decision and supporting the ruling of the Moscow Arbitration Court.
According to a decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation from July 2020, courts have the authority to involve state bodies, including the prosecutor’s office, in the case, if the circumstances show signs of money laundering. A federal law added a provision to the Arbitration Procedure Code, giving the prosecutor the right to ask the arbitration court to invalidate transactions made to evade responsibilities and procedures required by anti-money laundering legislation. The prosecutor can now join such cases at any stage and has the same procedural rights and obligations as a person involved in the proceedings.
According to the supervisory agency, in 2022, the Prosecutor General’s Office took part in the consideration by arbitration of 13 cases related to the possible withdrawal of money and other property into legal circulation for a total of 7 billion rubles, in four of them, legalization schemes for almost half of the specified amount were suppressed .
PNB Banka was established back in 1992 and was one of the largest assets in Latvia. In 2013, his controlling stake was acquired by Grigory Guselnikov, who the following year, together with his father, became the beneficiary of Vyatka-Bank. In 2017, Norvik Banka was fined €1.3 million for transactions in circumvention of sanctions against the DPRK. Shortly after that, Grigory Guselnikov in the media accused the leadership of the Bank of Latvia of extorting bribes and initiated a lawsuit in international arbitration against this country.
In September 2019, the bank was declared insolvent, its debts exceeded €465 million. Claims for the recovery of damages by the administrator Krastiņš were filed against all the managers and owners of the bank, including his deputy chairman of the board, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and a member of the board of the bank , the former head of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) August Hanning. The administrator’s request to seize Grigory Guselnikov’s assets was rejected by the Moscow Arbitration Court.
