Beyond Deutsche: U.S. Banks Also Implicated in Dubious Partnerships Abroad
CRISTINA MAZA, 24 February 2020
Evgeny, a retiree from the Russian city of Vladimir, always believed that the U.S. financial system had integrity. In particular Citibank, to him, was no Deutsche Bank, a bank known for getting in bed with dubious investors. And that belief, Evgeny says, may have led to his financial ruin.
The 63-year-old worked for years as a manager in the construction industry, and eventually he became a member of Russia’s minuscule middle class. He planned to retire in 2018 with roughly $100,000 in savings, the product of a lifetime of toil. For almost a decade he deposited his savings in one of Russia’s largest and most reputable financial institutions: Promsvyazbank. Evgeny was one of the bank’s top-tier clients, and he believed that he was on a path to financial stability for himself and his family.
Then one day in August 2017, he said, a bank manager approached him with an idea. She suggested that he trade his bank deposit for fixed-rate loan notes, and she pledged that the bank’s owners, the billionaire brothers Alexei and Dmitry Ananyev, would personally guarantee the notes. The bank manager said the notes were as safe as a bank deposit, but they had the added benefit of earning a high interest rate, around 5.75 percent.
