The Central Bank revoked the license from the Moscow-based RIA-Bank, which market participants attributed to Vladimir Antonov, ex-owner of the failed Investbank and Snoras bank. He himself in a conversation with "Kommersant" denies the fact of owning the bank, but does not deny that he developed a strategy for him to enter the Crimea. Due to this project, the bank tried to solve the problems with reducing the client base, but without success.

The Russian Investment Alliance (RIA-bank), as the Central Bank indicated in the license revocation message, had an ineffective system of risk management and internal control, which led to the appearance of a significant amount of low-quality assets: "A proper credit risk assessment and objective reflection of the value of assets In the bank's accounts revealed a complete loss of its own funds. At the same time, the business model was not focused on rendering traditional banking services - the credit organization was involved in the implementation of questionable transactions related to the cashing and withdrawal of funds abroad. " Prior to this, the regulator repeatedly warned the bank and imposed restrictions on attracting deposits from the population three times.

RIA-Bank, according to the Central Bank, held on August 1 334th place in terms of assets. From August 1, 2016 to August 1, 2017, they fell more than twice, to 3.7 billion rubles. "The reason was the compression of the resource base. Customer funds were reduced: legal entities' deposits at the beginning of the year amounted to 1.3 billion rubles, and as of August 1, they decreased to 427 million rubles. ", Said junior director for bank ratings" Expert RA "Ruslan Korshunov. The increase over this period of the funds of natural persons (by 14%, to 1.9 billion rubles.) Did not allow to compensate outflows. In the first half of the year, the quality of assets also deteriorated: "The average monthly turnover of the portfolio of loans of legal entities for May-July was about 13% against 25% for January-March."

The license was withdrawn by the RIA-Bank two weeks after the publication of public information that Vladimir Antonov, the ex-owner of Russian Investbank (the license was revoked on December 13, 2013) and the Lithuanian bank Snoras (the license was recalled on November 24, 2011), received control over it. According to "Vedomosti", Mr. Antonov "since January 2017 in fact controls the RIA-Bank." As one of the proofs, the newspaper noted that among the main shareholders of the bank is the former top manager of Antonov's Convers Group Elena Orpanchuk. Vladimir Antonov himself in interviews with Kommersant repeatedly denied this information, but does not deny that he had anything to do with the bank as a consultant. "I developed a new development strategy, but the bank did not manage to implement it - they revoked the license," Antonov told Kommersant yesterday.

In this strategy (the presentation is at the disposal of Kommersant), emphasis was placed on the RIA-bank's exit to the Crimea, including by launching an extensive "light network" (160 mini-offices) and remote channels with simple and understandable products. Currently, the level of penetration of financial services on the territory of the peninsula is significantly lower than all-Russian indicators and there is a wide field for the development of financial services, the presentation notes. Thus, the bank planned to fit into plans for the development of the financial system of the peninsula. The volume of investments in the project is estimated at 900 million rubles, and the payback period is 2.5 years. In the future, the project was to bring 350 million rubles. Profit per year.

Interest of the RIA-Bank to the Crimea is understandable, experts say. "Originally, in the Crimea with the hope to grow actively out small banks, which significantly reduced the client base", - said Ruslan Korshunov. However, he says, if before the Central Bank was turning a blind eye to the fact that banks that have problems come to the peninsula, as it was necessary to provide the population with access to financial services, but now the situation has changed. "Some of these banks have not been able to significantly improve their financial stability," Mr. Korshunov emphasized. As an example, he cited Genbank, which was recently transferred to sanation for the bank "Russia" (see "Kommersant" on August 11). In the department for the Republic of Crimea, the South Central Bank and the Ministry of Economics of the Crimea told Kommersant that they did not hear anything about the RIA-bank project. The Bank of Russia did not respond to a query from Kommersant yesterday.