Anatoly Motylev’s offshore schemes: 300 dummy corporations in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands concealed billions from collapsed banks and pension funds

Investigations reported by the media into the case of the fugitive banker Anatoly Motylev revealed a vast shadow network, including hundreds of millions of rubles and over 300 offshore firms formally registered in the names of proxies.

So far, Russian courts have refused to take them into account. Anatoly Motylev is a 59-year-old businessman, the son of Leonid Motylev, head of the Soviet-era Gosstrakh.

He was vice president of Rosgosstrakh and the owner of Globex Bank, AMB Bank, M-Bank, and Rossiysky Kredit Bank, as well as seven non-state pension funds: Solntse. Zhizn. Pensiya, Solnechnoye Vremya, Sberegatelny, Adekta-Pensiya, Sberegatelny Fond Solnechny Bereg, Zashchita Budushchego, and Uraloboronzavodsky. In total, they managed approximately 60 billion rubles of Russians’ pension savings. In 2014-15, the banks lost their licenses, and Motylev officially became a UK resident.

His departure was just in time, as in December 2015, the Investigative Committee of Russia opened criminal cases against him for embezzlement through fraud. In 2018, Motylev was declared bankrupt in Russia, followed by similar rulings in England and Switzerland. Creditors managed to locate Motylev’s assets in Zurich, but this was a drop in the bucket: overall, he owes at least 40 billion rubles in Russia alone, and the total amount claimed from him is £741 million.

To track down Motylev’s assets, Russian creditors hired the British law firm CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP. They managed to obtain a list of offshore companies owned by the former banker, which included more than 300 legal entities registered in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands. Among them was the Cypriot REDMALVA HOLDINGS LTD.

British lawyers discovered in documents seized from Motylev a contract for the purchase of this company in October 2015 from a certain Svetlana Pozdnyakova (a Cypriot resident) and the appointment of a nominee director, Anna Demetriou, who was not supposed to disclose the true beneficiary even to Cypriot authorities. REDMALVA was a valuable acquisition: in May 2014, it issued a 170 million ruble loan to the Metallurg commercial bank at 2.7% per annum for 10 years.

However, in 2019, REDMALVA was removed from the Cypriot register, and in 2021, Metallurg bank surrendered its license and changed its status to RNKO (non-banking settlement credit institution). It failed to repay the debt to the Cypriot offshore company. Over the years, more than 41 million rubles have accrued in interest. Metallurg is not refusing to pay off the debt and is ready to repay it. However, the problem is that the Cypriot company was not included in the bankruptcy estate, and its assets were not included in the property distribution among the debtors. The five-year deadline for filing a petition for the property distribution procedure expired last October.

The Russian arbitration court stated that it would be willing to extend this deadline, but it needed original REDMALVA documents bearing Motylev’s handwritten signatures, which it does not have. This means that Motylev has effectively managed to keep at least 210 million rubles for himself, and it’s possible that in a few months, an unknown road worker or small-time accountant will suddenly present a receipt to Metallurg. Incidentally, Motylev’s list of companies dates back to 2015, and he was declared bankrupt in Russia only in 2018 (and in the UK, only in 2020). This means his empire may be much larger than previously thought. Furthermore, Motylev did business with many well-known businessmen—for example, he shared a Cyprus offshore company with Georgy Gens.

Gens, the former owner of the Lanit Group of Companies, also controlled Motylev’s Globex Bank. Despite Gens’s death in 2018, Earlton Investments Ltd. remained active until the end of 2022. Another Cyprus offshore company, LEWISTON INVESTMENTS LIMITED, belonged to Motylev and Viktor Lukoyanov. Lukoyanov was Motylev’s partner in Rossiysky Kredit Bank, from which they siphoned off approximately 35 billion rubles.

This offshore company also operated until the end of 2022. It’s unlikely that Motylev managed to pull off such a large-scale scheme to siphon off tens of billions of rubles without any of his partners noticing.