| The bank itself spoke about financial fraud in its branch Alfa Bank had to fire the heads of its branches for the second time in a month due to financial irregularities. Less than a month ago, Vitaly Ryabov, the head of the St. Petersburg branch, which was being investigated by the local FSB department for participation in illegal VAT refund schemes in favor of clients, was dismissed. This dismissal was preceded by the seizure of documents that the FSB carried out at the Alpha central office on Academician Sakharov Avenue. The investigation into this case continues. Now Alpha began to find violations using its economic security service. The manager of the Far Eastern branch, Anton Snyatovsky, and a number of his subordinates lost their posts. At the same time, Alpha itself reported shortages and “gross violations” of internal regulations in its branch under the slogan of combating illegal operations. Competitors are not sure that such openness will be useful to the bank.
Alfa Bank yesterday issued a press release stating that its central office is conducting a “comprehensive audit” of regional divisions, and as a result of an inspection of the Far Eastern branch, a shortage of funds was identified in one of the additional offices, as well as gross violations of internal regulatory documents jar". In this regard, “a number of branch managers were removed from their positions, criminal proceedings were initiated against some of them,” and the inspection data was transferred to law enforcement agencies. Alpha hopes that the shortfall will be covered by the insurance company. As the bank reported, “The Far Eastern branch was insured by the Alfa Insurance group, and the risks were reinsured in the West through the broker Marsh.” True, the Russian company yesterday refused to clarify “until the end of the investigation” whether the incident was an insured event.
Mikhail Matovnikov, head of the banking department at RA Interfax, recalls that “in the early 90s, banks closed down entire branches, but never informed the public about this.” “For Russian credit institutions, this is a rather rare case when operational risks are not only identified, but also insured,” notes the analyst. In this regard, a representative of Alfa Bank told the Vremya Novostey newspaper that the inspection of branches began rather for political reasons: “In the summer, Russia set a course to combat offenses in the financial sector, and we considered that it was best to start with ourselves.” . According to him, “now almost all branches have been checked or are close to it, and the incident in the Far East will apparently remain the only one.”
Meanwhile, according to the Vremya Novostei newspaper, Alpha’s self-check is related to the case of the St. Petersburg branch. “By the middle of the year, FSB investigators began working with Alfa Bank on this case, which is why a decision was made to conduct an audit,” says a source familiar with the situation. In this regard, one of the large Moscow banks notes that “Alfa Bank carried out a successful PR campaign without waiting for information leaks from law enforcement agencies.” However, other Alpha colleagues were not so clear about the idea of “telling everything to the market”. The head of the financial and operational risks department of Mezhprombank, Alexander Burya, says that if a bank detects violations of the law in its system, it is obliged to inform law enforcement agencies. But “if the violations relate to internal regulations and no damage is caused to the bank’s clients, then it is advisable to limit ourselves to an internal investigation with appropriate organizational conclusions.” “I don’t know if we would have followed the path of Alfa Bank,” adds a representative of Rosbank, “we had no such precedents.” Yuri VERETENNIKOV |
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