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Probe launched in attack on investigator in St. Petersburg

The Saint Petersburg Office of the Investigative Committee is conducting an investigation in illegal banking under Part 2, item “b” of Article 172 of the RF Criminal Code. 4 people have been detained – acting CEO of Saint Petersburg office of OOO Gefest Commercial Bank, a public corporation, Yelena Galichina, Eduard Zabolonkov, Vladimir Smolkin and Denis Soldatov.

According to investigators, the accused used controlled accounts of OOO Restaura, OOO Briar, OOO Rokot opened at the Saint Petersburg office of Gefest Commercial Bank to carry out illegal banking from January 2013 to November 2016 – servicing other companies (client companies) by transferring money of the latter ones to the abovementioned controlled accounts using forged onerous civil contracts. This way they got a benefit of more than 11 million rubles.

Then, using controlled companies, the accused transferred the money to controlled accounts of physical persons opened in banks located in Saint Petersburg. They then withdrew the cash and handed it over to representatives of client companies for a reward of at least 6.5% of the cash sum.

On 9 November 2017, the investigators searched residence of beneficiary of OOO Gefest Vyacheskav Ananskikh. In the presence of witnesses and other participants of the search, Ananskikh used obscene language and threatened that the investigators would get sacked. Moreover, to obstruct the search the man hit one of the investigators causing him a closed craniocerebral injury and concussion.

Ananskikh is now under investigation into use of violence against a representative of authority and insult of a representative of authority under Part 2 of Article 318 and Article 319 of the RF Criminal Code.

Investigative operations are ongoing to find out all the circumstances surrounding the crimes and identify other persons involved in them.