On May 21, the Segodnya news program on the NTV television network reported about an article in the Geneva Le Temps newspaper: that employees of the Russian State Auditing Commission had arrived in Switzerland and asked law enforcement bodies to aid in their search for the IMF loan allocated to Russia on the eve of 1998 economic default. It is clear that the scandal connected with disappearance of $4.8 billion is not over yet, but there are no longer any hopes that the Russian Prosecutor General's Office will provide any aid.
It is no surprise Sergei Stepashin's emissaries arrived in Switzerland with such an unusual mission: on April 22, the head of the State Auditing Commission once again confessed he did not know the current whereabouts of almost $5 billion which Russia had received as a loan back in 1998. According to him, the money actually "dissolved" at the very moment it was sent to support a number of major banks, including SBS-Agro.
There is only one explanation: the dollars really "dissolved" as Stepashin says. However, speaking more precisely, the loan from the IMF was simply stolen.
It is no exaggeration: the tremendous sum of money the state received could not been stolen by any Mafia men, but only by top- ranking officials.
As was expected, the scandal burst out almost immediately: a year after the default I arrived in Bern both investigators of the Swiss Prosecutor General's Office and journalists immediately asked me: where are the billions of dollars Russia received?
Next summer, during next trip to Bern and Geneva, dozens of journalists attacked investigator for especially serious cases of the Prosecutor General's Office Nikolai Volkov asking when Russians would start the money stolen from them. Then, Volkov made a statement he had to pay hard for: he promised that as soon as he is back in Moscow he would pose the question on the beginning of an official investigation of a possible misappropriation of the IMF loan to the leadership of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office. Later he told me, "I came to report to deputy Prosecutor General Kolmogorov, who supervised the investigation. I say, while in Bern dozens of newspapers were piled up on me, each of which said that great sums of the IMF loan Russia had received had been transferred to foreign banks. We must not keep silent, we should immediately start an investigation. Kolmogorov shrugged his sholders, saying time will say. And a month later I was bounced from the Prosecutor General's Office with a scandal. I am sure, my report on swindling with the IMF loan was the last straw that broke the patience of my bosses."
While Moscow shrugged its shoulders, almost all leading Western media continued their own investigation of Kremlin's secrets.
On March 19, 1999 the US Secretary of Finance Robert Rubin said in his interview with the New York times, "the $4.8 loan the IMF allocated to Russia in august 14, 1998 was probably spent on improperly. To be more precise, it was misappropriated by Yeltsin's surrounding."
The paper developed the delicate statement of the US secretary of finance. The same day, on August 14 this tremendous sum was transferred from the account No. 9091 of the New York Federal reserve bank to the Kreditanstalt-Bankfrain in Lugano, Switzerland in favor of the joint stock Ost-Vest Handelsbank, Frankfort-on-Maine, Germany.
I talked about it to an old friend of mine, a security service officer. He only grinned, "Why are you surprised? So far all is being legal: the bank is a foreign branch of the Central Bank of Russia. While, further on, the adventure started. Look, $2.35 billion were immediately transferred from Frankfurt to the Bank of Sidney, from where $235 million were transferred to the account of an Australian company. Why so? Just because 25% of shares of the company belong to the "..." company - you know it very well - through its Luxemburg representative. What remain in Sidney? Right, $2.115 million. They are rapidly converted in sterling pounds, and transferred to the National Westminster Bank in London. Further the money is divided as follows: $1.4 billion are transferred back to the Bank of New York; $780 million are transferred here to Switzerland, to the Credit Swiss, and the remaining $270 million are transferred to the Lausanne branch of the Kreditanstalt-Bankferain." I mixed up in the financial maze, and dared to publish what I heard only after something of the aforementioned was partially announced in the Duma. No one denied the announcement. At present, I know only one Russian who is interested in the fate of the Russian money due to his duties. It is investigational judge from Geneva Loren Kasper-Ansermet. I saw him at a briefing, he has an austere face and is very laconic. In March this year the judge sent to the IMF an official request to present him the list of Russian banks which received parts of the allocated loan. According to him, he needs this information in order to find out whether these banks used the means for supporting the ruble as the IMF stipulated, or transferred them through Swiss banks to offshore accounts.
The judge is convinced that the money could have been transferred through Swiss banks for the sake of third parties, hence it was misappropriated. He states he is very interested in finding out how Swiss banks helped Russian officials to steal the IMF loan - he is very willing to meet with the Central Bank leadership and to have this colleagues from the Russian Prosecutor General's Office aid him. The judge has sent very polite letters to Moscow and is waiting for replies. He seems to be waiting in vain - Moscow keeps silent.
Of the papers Volkov unluckily for him brought from Switzerland, I found as the most interesting Italian La Republika. In the issue as of October 6, 1999 the newspaper started a series of articles generally titled "How the IMF was deceived." All these strange transferals could be a success under the only condition - devaluation of Russian bonds and the Russian ruble. This is what happened - the 1998 default that crippled fates of millions of Russians was planned and thoroughly thought of by Kremlin officials, and they had got more than enough in their pockets.
The fraud that happened almost four years ago was a blessing only for the Kremlin's bankers. Those who carried out policy independent from the authorities, are still disgusted with the past disgrace. In these terms, the interview of Chair of the National Reserve Bank's board of directors Alexander Lebedev with the Le Temps paper is very indicative. He says, "In August 1998 Russia lost everyone's trust. The government did not even talk to its national creditors. We possess a package of treasury obligations, GKO, at $150 million dollars. Large western banks own the same amount of securities. No one found it necessary to talk to them. In such conditions, how is it possible to trust this government? I have no trust in my government. How can I trust the Central Bank after scandal with Fimako? How can I trust the partner-bank if in Russia no financial institution that bankrupted over the past five years, has been announced insolvent? Assets were illegally transferred everywhere. Since then, participants of the market have had a very serious psychological barrier....
I can see that since August 1998 Russians banks are insolvent debtors. Moreover, it is a malicious bankruptcy that had been provoked by their directors and managers. From my standpoint, they stole this money. What happened? They received stabilization loans that also disappeared."
As is evident, the respected banker is a lawful person: he does not reveal a single name of the people who benefited by the national disaster. The whole Russia is naively expecting the Prosecutor General's Office to eventually institute a criminal case on the major crime that had been committed against the nation and its people. There is some hope that at least one person, the head of the State Auditing Commission has grown tired of this expectation and that is why his emissaries appeared in Switzerland trying to find the truth. I am convinced that their visit will be a success - at least they will have business and concrete support from well-known to our readers Prosecutor General of the Geneva district Maitre Bertoss. Last Friday I received this confirmation from his apparatus. (Translated by Arina Yevtikhova )