Nikolay Lagoon
The loan portfolios of several Laguna banks were resold at prices hundreds of times lower than they were before the temporary administration was installed. The state and its clients lost billions, and the banker became a friend of the new government.
This information is published on the website Radio Liberty
Translation: Argument
Over the past two years, 64 banks have been liquidated in Ukraine. The Deposit Guarantee Fund is now settling their debts. But are all the debts the banks incurred before their bankruptcy genuine? Analysis shows that some bank owners may have intentionally siphoned off funds from their own financial institutions before their liquidation.
Once a bank is declared insolvent, it is transferred to the Deposit Guarantee Fund, which will then deal with the accumulated debts and pay the bills. Deceived depositors left with nothing, an unbalanced banking system, and the depreciation of the hryvnia—these are the consequences of these criminal bankers' schemes. The "Schemes" program, a joint project of Radio Liberty and UA:First, is launching a series of investigations into the deliberate bankruptcy of Ukrainian banks.
"A banker with a sixth sense" and "the number one bank buyer"—those were the nicknames Mykola Lagun used to receive just two or three years ago. During Yanukovych's presidency, Lagun actively acquired financial institutions and, in addition to Delta Bank, also became the owner of Omega, Astra, and Kreditprom banks.
But during the banking crisis, Laguna's financial empire burst like a bubble. One after another, the banks were declared problematic, subsequently taken over by temporary administrators, and now three of the four financial institutions are in liquidation.
This not only affected the stability of the country's financial system, but also became an additional burden on the state budget.
But the bankruptcy of some banks was preceded by a series of interesting events that still resonate loudly today.
This is what happened on December 31, 2014 – a month before Nikolai Lagun’s Omega Bank was declared problematic.
On the day when the entire country was setting the New Year's table and decorating the Christmas tree, Omega Bank entered into a very strange agreement concerning more than 70 loan agreements.
At one time, this bank issued loans to a number of clients, and as of December 2014, they owed Omega Bank approximately 1,3 billion hryvnias in borrowed funds. To reduce the risk of borrowers defaulting on these loans, the bank secured itself by pledging valuable assets, such as buildings or land.
Overall, the book value of the collateral for the loans issued by Omega amounted to approximately 3,6 billion hryvnias. Therefore, if the borrowers had failed to repay their loans on time, the collateral could have been transferred to the bank. However, Omega Bank sold the claims on these loans to Ipoteka Kredit. This meant that the borrowers were no longer liable for repayment to the bank, but to the company that acquired these claims. This company, in turn, could have seized the debtors' collateral if loan payments were not made.
For the right to receive over a billion hryvnias from borrowers, Ipoteka Kredit paid the bank a remarkably small sum—only 5 million hryvnias. This means that instead of issuing loans worth over a billion hryvnias, Omega Bank received only 5 million. Furthermore, it was left without a large portion of its assets—the collateral.
Now, Artem Karachentsev, the Deposit Guarantee Fund's authorized representative for the liquidation of Omega Bank, is sorting out what remains in the bank.
"All of these loans were secured by very good collateral, mostly mortgages—that is, buildings, structures, and apartments. And the total value of this collateral, according to the bank's appraisal when it assessed these loans or when it accepted it as collateral, was over 3 billion hryvnias, which was sold for 5 million hryvnias," says the bank's liquidator.
The 5 million hryvnias received by Omega Bank is 724 times less than the so-called book value of the properties for which the bank's clients received loans. This lucrative deal was made possible with the help of another participant in the scheme, the company Pravyi Bereg. This firm valued the borrowers' property rights under the loans at only 4,9 million hryvnias.
For example, among other things, the bank sold the right to claim loans from the company Patria-Balance, which had pledged the Detsky Mir building in Zhytomyr to the bank. Due to the company's financial difficulties, the loans became problematic and were eventually resold for a pittance to the company Ipoteka Kredit.
"Our total monetary claims—approximately 48 million hryvnias (depending on the exchange rate)—were ceded for just 100,000 hryvnias. In other words, this amounts to less than a quarter of a percent of the nominal value of the claims under the loan agreements," explains Serhiy Panasyuk, a representative of the debtor, Patria-Balance.
Who valued the bank's assets so disproportionately, and why? "Schemes" attempted to locate Yegor Ustyugov, the director and owner of the appraisal firm "Right Bank." However, his phone was disconnected, and he was also not at the firm's registered address.
Meanwhile, the appraisal firm "Right Bank"'s findings were reviewed by the Ukrainian Society of Appraisers, which unites experts in this field. Experts found the company's report to be inconsistent with legal regulations and of poor quality.
Who was able to obtain such a loan portfolio from Omega Bank at attractive New Year's prices?
The current owner of the financial company "Ipoteka Kredit" is the Cypriot company Trumerg Holdings Limited, registered to two Cypriot citizens. However, back in early 2014, "Ipoteka Kredit" had completely different founders—the bank's owner, Nikolai Lagun, and his sister, Antonina. Furthermore, the company is registered in the building housing a Delta Bank branch—the core of Lagun's business empire.
Stanislav Maslo, who has headed Ipoteka Kredit since late 2012, is also no stranger to Nikolai Lagun's business. He admits to having previously worked at Delta Bank, but he declines to discuss the profitable acquisition of loan receivables, citing confidentiality.
"If I failed to provide you with information somewhere, or provided it in a crude manner, please understand, because at this point, management is responsible. I'd rather err on the side of caution than have anyone suspect that the manager or management personnel leaked information," he noted in a phone conversation with a Skhemy journalist.
The ceded Omega Bank loan portfolio did not remain with Ipoteka Kredita for long. In July 2015, the rights to claim under a number of agreements were resold again—to the asset management company Sky Capital Management. Here, too, ties to Lagun can be traced. The company is registered on Delta Bank's premises, and until the fall of 2014, it was called Delta Capital, not Sky Capital Management. Antonina Lagun, aforementioned, was a co-founder until November 2014, and then the company was transferred to the Cypriot company Sperlog Investments. However, no such company is registered at the registered address, and no one answers the phone.
According to the real estate registry, Sky Capital Management's loans are secured by offices and shopping centers, sports club premises, industrial complexes, and land plots.
Although the loan debts were formally resold several times, it appears that representatives of Ipoteka Credit and Sky Capital Management may be connected. Patria-Balance, whose loans were also sold, claims the same representatives from both firms attended the court hearings.
"Moreover, if today we received powers of attorney from Ipoteka Kredit LLC, then literally the next day, at another meeting, the same person represented the interests of Sky Capital Management, and so on. So, they really do have a staff dedicated to handling this issue; it's permanent and hasn't changed for at least two years, when all this was happening," Patria-Balance representative Sergei Panasyuk told Skhemy.
According to a Patria-Balance representative, the new creditors were interested in receiving funds quickly and even offered to write off part of the debt. "They discussed the discount level, which ranged from 30% to, say, infinity—depending on the specific loan and the legal terms, that is, the circumstances of the case. So, it boiled down to, if you have the means, let's do it as soon as possible," the Patria-Balance representative explained. "We had one loan, which the bank nominally held at two million hryvnias, but they bought it for, I think, 3,5 hryvnias. That's a margin that allows us to offer any discount."
The fact that the assigned loan portfolio was significantly problematic should not be misleading, notes Rostislav Kravets (pictured below), a partner at the law firm Kravets & Partners.
Rostislav Kravets
"The debt is 'assigned' at a discount of 90-95 percent, and in most cases even 99 percent. Therefore, it's impossible to say that a loan is not being serviced or that the collateral is bad—in any case, the companies that buy out such significant amounts are extremely profitable," the lawyer notes.
Omega Bank liquidator Artem Karachentsev notes: "We see that such things, such loan assignments, as in other banks that have gone bankrupt, always involve fraudulent actions by someone in the bank's management or owners. And as a result of these actions, the bank becomes insolvent."
Using the assets that remained in Omega Bank, a transitional bank, RBC Bank, was created and sold to a new investor in the summer of 2015. This saved the funds of clients who held accounts with the bank. However, the responsibility for paying creditors, including, for example, the tax inspectorate, remained with Omega Bank's liquidators—meaning, the state as well.
However, Omega Bank's liquidators faced an unusual situation. According to the authorized fund, Lagun himself is one of Omega's largest creditors. And if the dubious resale of the billion-dollar loan portfolio for a pittance is reversed, the proceeds will be returned, including to the scandalous banker himself.
"From the same pocket, it will return to the same pocket. But by legal means," explains Artem Karachentsev (pictured below).
Artem Karachentsev
As Skhemy discovered, loan portfolios from not only Omega Bank but also Delta Bank, Lagun's main financial asset, were sold to Ipoteka Credit and Sky Capital Management.
The Deposit Guarantee Fund told Schemes that in 2014-2015, prior to the introduction of the temporary administration, the management of Delta Bank JSC concluded agreements on the assignment of rights of claim for the specified companies for a total amount of over 400 million hryvnias.
Among those affected by this situation is the large state-owned enterprise Ukrspirt, which took out a loan from Delta Bank in 2013. The loan claim was transferred to Sky Capital Management in the fall of 2014, and then to two companies with beneficiaries in the Lviv region. Ukrspirt's debt of over 90 million hryvnias was forcibly written off from the state-owned enterprise's accounts.
We tried to talk to the former owner of Omega Bank, Nikolai Lagun, about the current situation, but in response to our question we heard only: "No comment."
One of Nikolai Lagun's registered addresses is a luxurious mansion in the elite village of Kozin near Kyiv:
An estate in the elite village of Kozin near Kyiv, where banker Nikolai Lagun is registered. He leased the land next to the house from the local village council for 25 years. The house itself is now registered to offshore companies.
"Schemes" tried to find Nikolai Lagun at his registered address, but the security guard said he wasn't there.
Interestingly, the same notary, Artem Litvinov, who registered the sale of Omega Bank's loan portfolio before the New Year, handled the registration of rights to the land and the house in Kozin.
It seems Nikolai Lagun has fared quite well even after the collapse of his banks. The same can't be said for some of the clients of the banks in his once-mighty empire.
In topic: Delta Bank revealed information about Gontareva and her family's accounts.
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Kateryna Kaplyuk
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