Russians buying up assets of liquidated Russian banks in Ukraine despite de facto ban – media

A company owned by a Russian citizen has won the bid to purchase the assets of two liquidated Russian banks and one bankrupt Ukrainian bank.

Source: Skhemy (Schemes), a Radio Liberty investigative project

Details: At the beginning of 2024, Ukraine's Deposit Guarantee Fund auctioned the assets of two liquidated Russian banks and one bankrupt Ukrainian bank, with a total value of UAH 3 billion (approximately US$71.9 million). Skhemy discovered that the company that won the auction was owned by a woman with Russian citizenship. She concealed her Russian citizenship from Ukrainian regulatory authorities, only disclosing her American citizenship.

The lot mainly consists of assets from the Russian Sberbank (renamed MR Bank), making up 90% of the total. A smaller portion of the assets belongs to Russian Prominvestbank and Ukrainian Megabank.

Radio Liberty reports that the business owned by a Russian citizen is managed by a Belarusian citizen, whom the Security Service of Ukraine suspects of having ties to Russian intelligence.

Spectrum Assets, the winning bidder, is a licensed financial institution in Ukraine that offers services such as factoring and lending.

Ukraine's register of legal entities lists the American firm Spectrum UA Credit LLC as the company's founder, with Marina Evseeva, a US citizen who also holds a Russian passport and frequently visits Russia, identified as its ultimate beneficial owner.

When asked by Skhemy why the company concealed information about the Russian citizenship of the owner of Spectrum Assets from Ukrainian regulatory authorities, the company's director, Nelya Voevchyk, replied:

"I don't know anything about it at all. I have a document stating that she's a permanent resident of the United States and she has a US passport. Nothing else was provided by my ultimate beneficial owner."

Spectrum Assets has been involved in previous auctions, purchasing, for example, the loan portfolios of bankrupt Ukrainian banks: Nadra Bank for UAH 24 million [roughly US$577,000] in March 2020 and Fidobank for UAH 52 million [approx. US$1.2 million] in September of the same year.

Ukraine's Deposit Guarantee Fund stressed that if it is discovered that the buyer of the assets concealed their connection to Russia, they will be required to pay a fine equal to 100% of the lot price and return the assets acquired in the auction.

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