In the case of Sergei Mavrodi, an interdepartmental group has been created that is developing measures to combat the pyramid

In a month, the founder of the MMM 2011 financial pyramid, Sergei Mavrodi, may end up behind bars. As a source in law enforcement agencies told Forbes, they are going to open a criminal case against the head of MMM and his closest assistants under Article 171 of the Criminal Code “illegal business activity.” It provides for up to five years in prison.

Now an interdepartmental group is working on the “Mavrodi case,” which includes representatives of all law enforcement agencies, as well as the Ministry of Finance and the Federal Service for Financial Markets, the source said. Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are still collecting information about those participants in the pyramid who have accumulated large sums of money in their accounts. The personal accounts of the so-called ten-thousanders and hundred-thousanders (leaders of large “cells” of the organization) may be arrested in the near future, and sites that contain MMM advertising may be blocked. Now, as the Ministry of Internal Affairs clarified, the top of the pyramid has become more active, and activities are underway to cash out funds from system participants.

By the way, one case under Article 171 has already been filed against Mavrodi - by the prosecutor’s office of the Kolyvan district of the Novosibirsk region. The main accused here is the “centurion” of “MMM 2011” Alexey Astafiev, who collected 9 million rubles in the village of Kolyvan (45 km from Novosibirsk, 10,000 inhabitants). Mavrodi is involved in this case as an accomplice.

Law enforcement agencies got involved late with MMM 2011: the system is already bursting at the seams. Delays in payments to participants reach two months in some cases, says foreman Evgeniy Tashlanov. According to him, some pyramid managers, having accumulated 20–30 million rubles in their accounts, simply disappear along with the investors’ money. He knows of two such cases. Managers are withdrawing money from the pyramid according to a scheme that Forbes spoke about back in March of this year. Ten thousand people, for example, transfer large sums to their accounts, citing the need to pay for the services of advertising agencies.

Apparently, Mavrodi understands that depositors’ confidence in the pyramid is falling and people are withdrawing more and more funds. To stimulate their influx, he introduced new rules: when depositing money into the system, the participant is paid a bonus - 50% of the amount. All deposits earn an income of 40% per month. “Under the huge burden of payments, the system should collapse in June of this year,” says Henryk Penikas, a teacher at the Higher School of Economics, who calculated a mathematical model of the pyramid at Forbes’ request. The new rules, due to which MMM’s income will increase, will delay the collapse of the system for a maximum of a month - until August.

Mavrodi himself believes that it will no longer be possible to destroy the pyramid. He considers plans to seize accounts and initiate criminal cases to be nonsense. “I’ve been hearing this news almost every day for the last six months,” says the creator of the pyramid. At the same time, Mavrodi promises to comply with all orders of law enforcement agencies: “I am a law-abiding citizen. What doubts can there be here at all?” He had not heard about the disappearance of two ten-thousanders, and explains the delays in payments by the fact that the managers of MMM 2011 do not have time to process applications for payments, of which there are quite a lot.

A representative of the interdepartmental group for MMM 2011 says that after the neutralization of Mavrodi, it is planned to develop amendments to the legislation, according to which advertising of financial pyramids will be equated with advertising of drugs. The penalty for such a violation, however, is small - a fine of 4,000 to 5,000 rubles (for individuals) with confiscation of advertising products.

Sergei Mavrodi: last month of freedom