"Settling Scores"

Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak was arrested

The Basmanny Court of Moscow on Friday issued a warrant for the arrest of Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak, the leading Russian negotiator with foreign and international representatives on the settlement of state external debt and lending. The basis for this was the suspicion of fraud brought against the official by representatives of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation (SKP). Together with Mr. Storchak, two more people were detained and arrested - the president and chairman of the board of directors of CJSC JSCB Interregional Investment Bank (IIB) Vadim Volkov (formerly also Deputy Minister of Finance) and the general director of the capital's CJSC Sodexim Viktor Zakharov. What exactly we are talking about, which events investigators considered fraudulent, who participated in them, and even what amounts we are talking about remained a mystery until yesterday. No comments or explanations were given either to the SKP, or to the FSB, whose employees took part in the detention of the official, or to other structures.

Last night, news agencies cited the words of a certain source in the Ministry of Finance, who said that, according to his information, Mr. Storchak’s case may be “connected with the settlement of a Soviet debt to the Sodexim company.” “We are talking about the feasibility of this deal,” the source said. - According to the documents that are currently being considered by the government, we have a debt to this company. However, I cannot say what worried the investigation, what they found some flaws in. The scope of the deal's commitments may be called into question." True, where and what obligations the USSR formed towards the Sodexim company created in 1996 was not explained.

The detention of Mr. Storchak came as a complete surprise to absolutely everyone, including even his colleagues and immediate management. The head of the Ministry of Finance, Alexei Kudrin, admitted on Saturday that he did not understand what, even theoretically, law enforcement agencies could suspect his deputy of, and that he himself even learned about the arrest with a significant delay. The surprise and mystery of Mr. Storchak’s arrest was further enhanced by the fact that it occurred on the eve of the Deputy Minister’s important business trip abroad . On Friday, as part of the official Russian delegation, together with Minister Kudrin, he was supposed to fly to South Africa to participate in a meeting of finance ministers and heads of central banks of the G20 countries. And, among other things, Mr. Storchak was supposed to be there to negotiate a settlement on Libya's debt to Russia.

Already in South Africa, Mr. Kudrin said that he intended to familiarize himself with the circumstances of the arrest of his deputy in the near future. “I don’t yet understand these accusations, which I will, of course, look into in more detail,” he noted. - And, I think, the opinion of the Ministry of Finance on this situation will be taken into account. The type of accusation that was voiced is not entirely clear to me, much less the preventive measure against a person who worked for many years and fought every day for every penny, for every cent, defending the interests of Russia in all debt negotiations. While we are clarifying the situation regarding my deputy Storchak, my workload of directly supervising the departments that he led will increase. I will have to pick up some of the negotiations that Storchak personally conducted and which were carried out in agreement with key ministries - the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Industry and Energy. Here the Ministry of Finance never acts alone.”

Meanwhile, the SKP and the FSB, which, as far as is known, is also involved in the investigation, have continued to remain silent in recent days. As it turned out from unofficial sources, this criminal case - on the basis of attempted fraud - was opened by the Investigative Committee on November 12 on the basis of materials from an inspection by the FSB and the tax service. Detained, as it turned out, were Messrs. Storchak, Volkov and Zakharov were there on November 15th. The next day, the court issued a warrant for their arrest, and a search was carried out in Mr. Storchak’s office at the Ministry of Finance. On Friday, rumors spread among officials and journalists about the detention of the Deputy Minister of Finance, but even after that the UPC and the FSB refused to confirm anything. Officially and very briefly, the UPC announced the arrests only on Saturday.

Such mystery and secrecy, although we were talking about a public person and well-known not just in Russia, but also in global financial circles, naturally immediately gave rise to talk about a new round of inter-clan struggle in the highest echelons of power on the eve of the upcoming elections. Many observers logically assumed that the arrest of Mr. Storchak, especially in conditions of such secrecy, can hardly be regarded as another campaign to combat corruption. In such cases, the authorities usually, on the contrary, try in every possible way to demonstrate their “successes and achievements.” Suffice it to recall the “exemplary” operation to expose “werewolves in uniform” from the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department, the exposure of which was announced even before these same “werewolves” were detained. In addition, the beginning of the struggle in the power structures had already been laid after the arrest of FSKN General Alexander Bulbov - after that incident, the security forces themselves openly started talking about a “war of the special services.” Against this background, the arrest of Mr. Storchak looked like a classic example of the result of a behind-the-scenes struggle in power structures.

Perhaps that is why, until yesterday evening, not a single politician decided to comment on what happened, either not understanding what was happening, or being afraid to voice their data. A statement in connection with the arrest of Mr. Storchak was made only by State Duma deputy Alexander Lebedev, according to whom, this is “not evidence of an intensified fight against corruption, but a settling of scores between certain clans.” Although he did not say which clans he was talking about.

However, in the UPC, obviously, all these points do not bother anyone, and, most likely, soon the arrest of Mr. Storchak, like General Bulbov, will be recognized as another manifestation of the “uncompromising fight against corruption”, which will continue “regardless to positions and departments." This is supported by the truly “killer” logic of the arguments presented by the UPC in court when discussing the issue of Mr. Storchak’s arrest. The investigation insisted that he could escape because he had a foreign passport. And this was the true truth, since the deputy minister was supposed to fly to Africa as part of the official delegation. However, such an “uncompromising fight against corruption” is unlikely to improve the image of Russia abroad, which is receiving particularly close attention there in connection with the upcoming elections. After all, such a swift and mysterious arrest without any explanation or preliminary investigation, on the contrary, can only surprise what is happening in a country where even an official of such rank, in fact, the “face of Russia” in the international financial arena, is suspected of fraud.

As for the criminal case itself, because of which Mr. Storchak ended up in prison, practically nothing was known about it, and versions of its appearance were based only on meager data about those arrested. The head of the IIB, Vadim Volkov, served as deputy head of the Ministry of Finance in 1999-2004, responsible for foreign currency financing. His area of ​​competence, in particular, included issues such as operations with OVVZ and the financing of Russian representative offices abroad. Mr. Zakharov also obviously knew Mr. Volkov - the Sodexim company is a client of IIB, as indicated on the bank’s website. True, little is known about this company itself - it supplies medicines and medical equipment and “appeared” in “open” sources only once, in 2002. Then Mr. Zakharov gave a short interview, saying that Sodexim held an exhibition of medical equipment in Iraq and is one of the few companies in the world that supplies relevant goods to this country.

The founders of Sodexim, according to the SPARK database, are four companies - Vizex LLC, Interinvest OJSC, Intersot LLC and Vneshintorg OJSC, some of them were founded by individuals. At the same time, Sodexim has a single subsidiary - the Interregional Center for Promoting Trade and Economic Cooperation with Partners in Arab Countries, registered in Saratov. Other shareholders of this center include, for example, the Russian-Arab University and the Badr Forte Bank, partly owned by Egyptian citizens.

MIB's pedigree is far more remarkable. Its shareholders are a number of shipbuilding enterprises, their managers are members of the bank's supervisory board. However, observers attribute the “origin” of the criminal case more likely to transactions related to providing assistance to Iraq - both before the start of the war and recently, in which Sodexim participated. Considering the specialization of the company, it is possible that they were talking about the supply of medicines and medical equipment as part of interstate cooperation. Accordingly, as a result of any offsets, Sodexim’s expenses could be attributed to Iraq’s debt to Russia, from the budget, the company could try to receive compensation. It is theoretically possible, says one of the experts, that the company should have made some supplies to pay off the debt, but in fact did not do this, but received or tried to receive compensation. It is also possible that the investigation came across some inconsistencies in the documents and considered this an attempt at fraud (deciding, for example, that the company was trying to get more than it was entitled to). However, experts note that issues regarding “Iraqi debts,” given the situation in this country, actually cannot be resolved bilaterally: both negotiations and settlements are transparent to a number of interested countries and international organizations.

Experts also note that Mr. Storchak, albeit indirectly, participated in another not very recent scandal in the Ministry of Finance - with the arrest in 2004 of the deputy of the department of international financial relations, public debt and state financial assets Denis Mikhailov. At that time, this department was headed by Mr. Storchak, although no one made any complaints against him. Mikhailov was accused of receiving a bribe from two businessmen in the form of a Mercedes car in exchange for an official certificate with schemes for repaying government debts of more than ten developing countries, which constitutes a state secret. In 2006, the court sentenced Mikhailov to ten years of strict regime, but the Supreme Court reduced this term to five years. However, the Ministry of Finance itself explained that these two cases are in no way interconnected: “This is a new case, this is not what happened in relation to Mikhailov, there (in the case - Ed.) there are no bribes or machines.”

In addition, versions were put forward that Mr. Storchak and Sodexim could be involved in scandalous stories involving the repayment of debts to Russia by a number of countries, including Algeria. Although it is unclear what exactly investigators might have seen as fraud. After all, decisions on debt restructuring, repayment or write-off are made by the government, while the Ministry of Finance here acts only as a body preparing documents.

It was not possible to obtain comments from either the MIB or Sodexim regarding the arrests that took place yesterday. Mr. Storchak's lawyer also could not be reached. According to our source, during the first investigative actions he was provided with an appointed lawyer (at state expense). It is only known that the official categorically denies his guilt.

Ekaterina KARACHEVA, Alexey GRISHIN