Moscow sentences Promsvyazbank’s founders to eight years each — a sentence neither Ananyev brother will serve
Moscow’s Lefortovo District Court sentenced the former Promsvyazbank co-owners Alexei and Dmitry Ananyev to eight years in prison each, the Russian business outlet RBC said on August 18. Both men were tried in absentia.
The court found the brothers guilty of embezzling more than 39 billion rubles from the bank.
According to investigators, the Ananyevs organized the “systematic embezzlement” of the bank’s funds from 2012 to 2017, using their control over Promsvyazbank and their powers over its lending policy.
The brothers also face pending cases of abuse of office, misappropriation of funds, fraud, and money laundering.
The brothers founded Promsvyazbank in 1995. Russia’s Central Bank announced a bailout of Promsvyazbank in December 2017. Dmitry Ananyev then left Russia for Cyprus. Alexei Ananyev stayed in Russia for a long time afterward, managing his share of the business, before he too left the country.
Criminal proceedings against the Ananyevs began in 2019, two years after the bailout. That same year, Cypriot authorities said they were reviewing their decision to grant the brothers “golden passports,” citizenship awarded in exchange for investment.
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