Manager of the MC Alfa-Capital Sergey Gavrilov publicly announced the first about the Moscow banking ring last summer: he warned customers that the destiny of the ring banks could be decided before 2018, and advised to get rid of the subordinated bonds of Binbank, Promsvyazbank, FC Opening and Moscow credit bank (IBC). All but the MKB, the Central Bank took for sanation, which cost 1.5 trillion rubles.

The ring was not a metaphor - moreover, it was not only banking, the chairman of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina admitted in an interview to Vedomosti. Participants in the Moscow pension and banking ring-it included banks, pension funds, and "some other financial institutions" -took mutual operations, not necessarily looped, sometimes they were two-sided, she said: "This was done in order to bypass our regulation, camouflage risks. " Risks were accumulating, and when one of the institutes experienced problems, they responded to those who were engaged in cross-investment - the problem had to be solved, continues Nabiullina: "These banks are not only too big to fail, but too big to stay as it is . We therefore created a new mechanism for sanitation. "

The Fellowship of the Ring

The amount of operations inside the ring amounted to "at least tens of billions of rubles," Nabiullina said, without giving the upper bound of the estimate. Director for corporate ratings "Expert RA" Pavel Mitrofanov estimates the ring to hundreds of billions of rubles up to 300 billion. Other analysts did not dare to assess the estimates - the picture of these operations is not completely visible yet. Not the fact that the regulator knows everything - you need to see the whole chain, says Fitch analyst Alexander Danilov.

"One of such deals is known to you - substitution of loans with bonds for bonds of the structure connected with the pension group by 30 billion rubles on the balance sheet of FC Otkritie," Nabiullina said. We are talking about deals on the eve of the reorganization of FC Otkritie - in August of last year, instead of secured loans granted to O1 Group structures by Boris Mintz, the bonds of SP1 company O1 Group Finance were on the bank's balance sheet. On these securities, a default was declared.

In the spring of 2015 after the IPO of Promsvyazbank for 10% of the bank's shares for 6.9 billion rubles. bought on the stock exchange NPF "Future" Mints and funds of the group "Safmar" - "Trust" and "Safmar." As a result, money was returned to the owners of the pension funds by the chain, Nabiullina knows: "Yes, such a story was <...> And it was hard enough to prove that this is an improper source of capital for the bank." Just before the rehabilitation of Promsvyazbank, the funds sold 20% on the Moscow stock exchange - now the bank disputes these deals in court, claiming that the Promsvyaz Capital company of its former co-owner, Dmitry Ananyev, bought Promsvyazbank's money.

Ring, still ring

"The market knew about the pension-banking ring. There were schematic banking IPOs, they got into pension money and de facto directed them to finance their own projects, "says co-owner of Sovcombank Sergey Khotimsky. The price of APFs reached 20% of funds under management - this cost is repulsed only by operations with a certain focus, he continues.

Somewhere assets were being drawn, cheap funds were being channeled to shareholder projects, which is much more profitable than a bank loan, Mitrofanov said. Do not forget about projects in real estate, part of the ring can be there, says one of the managers.

Dmitry Mints, member of the board of directors of the O1 Group, acknowledged that the situation in the banking sector affected the group - then it was announced that Boris Mints, his father, left the capital of O1 Properties, the key asset of the family, the largest owner of Moscow-class A offices. it is necessary to reduce the debt burden, but how can this be done if the Central Bank is suing you? How to pay off the ICD, if due to these courts we are not allowed to conduct any activity? "- said Dmitry Mints to Vedomosti in March.

In April, the IBC, to which the group owed 25 billion rubles, transferred the debt to its principal shareholder, the Rossium concern. And he hired Riverstretch Trading & Investments "to work on structuring the return of funds transaction." Mintz was looking for buyers and NPF, wrote "Kommersant" and Reuters, citing sources. The Mins left the whole family with Russia and are in London, they told "Vedomosti" four interlocutors.

Yesterday, Dmitry Mints responded to Vedomosti's questions about the ring, deals with Promsvyazbank, answered that, "except that this is completely untrue, I can not say anything to you." The purchase of Promsvyazbank's shares was a market investment, SFI representative, shareholder of NPF Safmar, Anton Goltsman assures, noting that the holding lacks information about any counter financial flows in the framework of certain "agreements". Representative of NPF "Future" in response to questions sent links to estimates of transactions, which the Central Bank gave in 2015.

Ring for retirement

The pension-banking ring is somewhat wider than the three banks with related structures and the NPF group, Mitrofanov is sure. "If something is left, it is much smaller," Nabiullina said. In her opinion, in a significant part of these problems have already been resolved - "just here was the concentration of the problem."

The scale of the crisis in the pension market is greater than in the banking market, the analyst of VTB Capital Mikhail Shlemov is sure. Until the recovery and clearing in the NPF market is over, it is difficult to pass to the concept of individual pension capital (IPK), he is sure. The main problem of the pension-banking ring is the undermined confidence in the pension system, Shlemov believes: "People wanted to transfer money to APFs, fearing a change in the status of savings after the freezing of the funded part, but in the funds it was not all smooth." The Central Bank will have to spend years to convince the population of the reliability of the pension system, he expects.

Dealing with cross-financing is a difficult task, somewhere the Central Bank lacks the authority to react more quickly and collect evidence: the Central Bank still has much to do, Khotimsky agrees. "The key in this story is that impunity does not upset future generations," he concludes.

Circular, guessed Stirlitz

"Now there is a change in the law, according to which damage can be brought to the controlling owner and in the case of bank rehabilitation - earlier this was available only in case of bankruptcy of the bank. We are going to use this norm, "Nabiullina warned, without specifying possible claims to the former owners.

Of them, the assets to the regulator, according to Nabiullina, were transferred only by the former owner of Binbank Mikail Shishkhanov. The Central Bank sent to the law enforcement agencies appeals for sanitized through the FCS banks for 260 billion rubles., Including on FC Otkritie - 20.5 billion.

Vadim Belyaev, the former co-owner of FC Otkritie, did not answer Vedomosti's calls. A number of assets were transferred to the bank last year, the representative of the Holding Company said: "There is a dialogue about other assets, but we have disagreements in assessing their value."

Such disagreement with the Central Bank is with Shishkhanov. "We believe that he transferred [assets worth] about 100 billion rubles." Shishkhanov said in September that he intended to transfer assets to the Central Bank by 300-350 billion rubles. "I'm not involved in the assessment of the Central Bank, it's hard to comment. The way I bought it, I gave it away - I collected assets for five years. The market lost much in price. If my assets were not depreciated, sanation would not be necessary. What was a year ago, now is another money. The price, probably, does not match, as Elvira Sahipzadovna says, but the asset still exists, "Shishkhanov said.

The representative of Ananiev, who sells Russian assets, did not answer the questions.