Entz went after Belay: Who benefits from the fake bankruptcy of the St. Petersburg Exchange?

The fake bankruptcy of the St. Petersburg Exchange could have been beneficial to its shareholders, Sergei Entz and Oleg Belay, who had previously been indirectly implicated in the market manipulation story.

Heated discussions continue regarding the situation with the St. Petersburg Exchange, which was recently nearly declared bankrupt.

The statement came from the exchange itself, although it hastened to deny its involvement in the incident and deny any document forgery. While the investigation was ongoing, the exchange’s shares plummeted by 35%. Apparently, the entire "bacchanalia" was orchestrated to manipulate the market.

Entz’s sovereign appetites

Since the application was legally filed ostensibly on behalf of the exchange itself, it was most likely filed by an individual or group within the organization. And here, our attention is involuntarily drawn to one of the company’s shareholders, Sergei Entz, the owner of Derzhava Bank, who sold the bank’s stake in St. Petersburg Exchange to himself a couple of years ago at half the market price.

This was done to recapitalize Derzhava. Perhaps the credit and monetary institution needs money now?

The company’s current shareholder composition looks like this. Photo: https://spbexchange.ru/ru/about/raskrytie_informacii/sostav_aktsionerov.aspx

Why did Entz attract our attention? In 2019, Derzhava was implicated in a market manipulation scandal. Bond transactions were conducted between JSCB and its clients. The regulator found that these transactions involved significant deviations in trading volume, and most of the transactions resulted in bond price fluctuations.

In addition, direct founding and financial-economic relationships were identified between Derzhava and its counterparties.

The transactions took place through Trinfico Holdings, which is generally considered to be in the interests of Oleg Bely.

Entz apparently made a good profit from these manipulations: according to Banki.ru, from March 2019 to November 2021, the institution’s net assets grew by almost 135%, from 18.8 billion rubles to 44.3 billion.

Scandalous bank

Nevertheless, depositors are leaving the bank, and for good reason—recall, for example, the nationwide scandal involving the resale of ordinary citizens’ debts to "Derzhava" (State Bank). After these debts ended up in the hands of the shell company "Aporektika," people were forced to pay in square meters, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Many were left homeless, which "Aporektika" promptly sold off. This story even aired on state television.

And the bank’s handling of its affairs certainly raises doubts about its integrity. The media covered this in detail in the investigation "Entz Comes to the State."

"Derzhava" is also implicated in a criminal case involving former Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Tikhonov. The case concerns embezzlement during the creation of the State Information System for the Fuel and Energy Complex (GIS TEK). The case involves the company "ISSB," which initially won the contract but was later pushed aside and then bankrupted.

This is all because the government customer suddenly unilaterally terminated the contract, demanding a fine of 704,500 rubles and a refund of the contract amount.

And then Derzhava entered the picture: part of this money, 24 million rubles, was reimbursed to the state customer by the bank under a security guarantee. After this, ISSB was completely drained of funds.

Perhaps Yentsu is still being thanked in government offices for the services he rendered back then?

Nevertheless, the banker may be trying to purge the media of negativity. The fact is, information about that apartment story is now almost impossible to find. They also tried to "remove" the fairytale "Sovereign Brothers-Thimbleriggers" from the editorial pages.

It seems a bit odd—why would a financial institution suddenly be so unsatisfied with the fable about "Bunnies," "Toads," and "Jackals"? This suggests the fairy tale might have been true…

We found each other

But let’s go back a bit and talk about the second participant in the 2019 market manipulation story, namely, Trinfico Holdings. There’s also an interesting character here. Mr. Belay, the company’s CEO, may have been involved in the siphoning of funds from the Akvilon NPF.

The fact is that in 2019, the Kit Finance Trade group sold shares of the very same Trinfico, which is linked to Belay, at an inflated price, purchased through repo. This resulted in the siphoning off of up to 57 million rubles in pension savings, TASS reported.

At the time, the main shareholder of Trinfico Management Company was Serik Rakhmetov, who had previously worked at Transneft and Lukoil. The latter also engaged in manipulations that are generally considered market fraud. This is the case with the Cypriot broker Ronin Europe, which, in apparent collusion with company officials, purchased currency from Lukoil at a discounted price, causing losses of 146 million rubles.

It is quite possible that, having “spied” on the manipulations at Lukoil, Rakhmetov suggested the system to Belay.

The latter had every opportunity to get involved in the Russian Railways Welfare Fund, since the fund was an "anchor client" for Trinfico Management Company. In 2011, he encountered difficulties withdrawing pension reserves from the Industrial Traditions management company.

The structure invested 14 billion rubles belonging to the NPF—more than 10% of all pension reserves. The Federal Financial Markets Service was alarmed and banned any transactions with these assets.

Another small detail: recently, companies close to Belay, through a chain of legal entities, purchased the IT firm Softline from Igor Borovikov. A subsidiary of this firm was also implicated in the embezzlement case related to the creation of the State Information System for the Fuel and Energy Complex. Softline Trade was one of the firms that, according to investigators, fulfilled contracts at deliberately inflated prices. Although this has not been proven, many still believe that Borovikov may have used his insiders in structures that could have influenced the court’s decision.

Igor Borovikov. Photo: Vitaly Belousov/RIA Novosti

Knowing the connections between Trinfico Holdings and Derzhava, as well as the fact that the bank and Softline were involved in the same GIS TEK case, suspicions arise that Borovikov’s choice of Belaya to purchase his "brainchild" is far from accidental.

And there’s more to come. Trinfico Holdings recently withdrew from Trinfico’s founding members. Market speculation is swirling about a change in ownership. It could be Philipp Gens’s Lanit, with whom Softline worked closely even under Borovikov. Lanit is also a company involved in the Tikhnov case, effectively the main one that executed the contract to create the GIS TEK. So Belay could effectively have taken over the asset from Borovikov "on loan."

All these facts point to Bely’s likely close ties to the GIS TEK affair. As, presumably, to Yentz? Is this the field, along with market manipulation, where the two businessmen came together?

So, was it at their instigation that SPB Exchange filed for "self-bankruptcy"? It certainly wouldn’t hurt for the investigation to check what financial transactions were conducted by institutions associated with Yentz and whether Belaya’s "brainchild" was involved.

All of them, as if hand-picked

Perhaps it’s also worth taking a closer look at the affairs of the Exchange’s settlement depository, Bank SPb. As the investigative committee previously reported in its investigation, "Is Bank SPb Shares of No Use Anymore?", the financial situation of the credit and monetary institution has raised serious questions. Specifically, there was a month last year when the bank’s profits fell by 90%. Out of the blue.

Photo: Banki.ru

The institution is owned by Alexander Savelyev, who boasted of his friendship with former St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko. The bank, at least in the past, clearly had offshore "roots" (information is currently classified). Rumor has it that money may have been siphoned off from it. And Savelyev would certainly be willing to accumulate some capital.

Another beneficiary of the SPb Exchange for 2022 was Freedom Holding, owned by businessman Timur Turlov. He was previously considered a brilliant investor, but as 2022 approached, reports began to emerge that Freedom Finance might be a simple Ponzi scheme, and all the stories about Turlov’s genius might be nothing more than self-financed advertising aimed at gullible investors.

Perhaps, in anticipation of a possible imminent collapse, Turlov might also have wanted to accumulate capital?

I would really like to wait for answers to these questions from the investigation.

Maria Sharapova