Stavropol Territory: underground bank with billions of profits exposed

Two unemployed residents of the city of Stavropol founded an underground bank, and for three years earned more than 8 billion roubles, said a source from local law-enforcement bodies.

"It has been established that from January 2008 to March 2011, the two men, having no license, and acting through dummy companies rendered banking services to various commercial organizations by cashing of money and received illegal incomes of 8.6 billion roubles," said the source.

A criminal case was opened against the suspects under part 2, Article 172, of the Criminal Code (large-scale illegal banking activities, undertaken by a group of persons), which assumes up to seven years in prison, the RIA "Novosti" reports.

Law enforcement bodies are regularly revealing underground bankers. Thus, in July, the Stavropol Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) exposed a criminal grouping, three members of which had illegally cashed - within 2.5 years - at least 3.4 billion roubles. They collected some 3-8 percent from their customers for this operation and earned a total of 103.4 million roubles, which suggests that the Stavropol "bankers" had cashed tens of billions roubles, the "Vedomosti" reports.

See earlier report: "Northern Caucasus sees more and more shady financial transactions, "Rosfinmonitoring" says."