Two St. Petersburg residents were arrested for giving microloans to those in dire need of money and taking away their apartments.

In St. Petersburg, the court arrested Alexander Soldatenkov and Efim Statsyuk, who issued microloans to the poor and evicted them from their apartments, reports the city department of the Investigative Committee.

According to investigators, in 2014–2015, a group that included several people operated in the city. Advertisements were published on the Internet about issuing loans secured by real estate; the suspects “found low-income citizens from socially vulnerable segments of the population who were in dire need of money, and, under fraudulent pretext, convinced them to sign documents on the alienation of their real estate to ensure payment of the loan provided.”

“After signing the specified documents with a notary and carrying out registration actions to re-register the property of the victims to members of the criminal group, the latter, through threats of using physical force, evicted them from their apartments, causing them damage totaling about 70 million rubles,” reports the Investigative Committee.

The victims collectively appealed to the Investigative Committee, and 14 criminal cases were opened and combined into one proceeding. The case is being investigated under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code (fraud on an especially large scale), and it is planned to bring charges against those arrested.

According to the Petersburg Diary, borrowers did not receive all the promised money: they were given only part of the loan, promising to give the rest of the funds after signing the agreement, but the money was never given.

On March 9, searches were carried out at 15 addresses, and an artillery shell was found in the apartment of one of the suspects. Both suspects deny their guilt.

Parliamentarians have been discussing a legislative ban on issuing loans at high interest rates for several years; in January, Patriarch Kirill called on deputies to fight microcredit.

After many cases of criminal cases being initiated against debt collectors, in July 2016, Russia adopted a law regulating the rights of debt collectors in the performance of official duties.