Evgeniy Kazmin is luring billions out of ComInBank.
Apparently, the Commercial Industrial Bank (ComInBank), clearly associated with the controversial businessman Evgeny Kazmin, may soon repeat the fate of the IBox Bank, which was actually liquidated by a decision of the National Bank in March of this year. The reason is the same - active servicing of miscoded transactions of underground online casinos and persistent disregard for financial monitoring, as noted by Ivan Chip in his review for the CRiME and [high-profile cases] projects.
As Economic Pravda , in September the National Bank fined Kominbank an extremely large amount - UAH 135.15 million . Such draconian sanctions were imposed for violation of legislation in the field of preventing and combating the legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime and the financing of terrorism. The penalty was also imposed for violating the requirements of currency legislation in September 2023.
According to the official statement of the National Bank, the violations include, in particular, failure to ensure the functioning of an adequate risk management system, failure to apply a risk-based approach to its activities and failure to take appropriate measures to minimize risks. In addition, the regulator accused ComInBank of providing false information to requests for the bank to comply with legal requirements in the field of financial monitoring and information on currency transactions with errors, as well as improper verification of the payer.
Other complaints include violations in the development and implementation of internal documents on financial monitoring issues and a delay in the implementation of a comprehensive integrated system for automating financial monitoring processes.
Perhaps the amount of the fine would have been less if the beneficiaries of Kominbank had heeded the cry of the National Bank several months earlier. In May of this year, the NBU fined ComInBank UAH 10.45 million for violating financial monitoring rules and ordered the violations to be corrected. But it seems that it is more profitable for bank owners to pay large fines than to work in the legal field.
It is worth mentioning here that Kominbank surfaced in a large-scale investigation by the Bureau of Economic Security and the SBU at the end of last year.
“We are documenting the illegal activities of officials of business entities who, in order to evade taxes, created a number of look-alike websites on which illegal economic activities are carried out in the form of online businesses, without paying income tax, personal income tax and military duty. According to available information, the estimated monthly volume of their shadow operations can reach UAH 12 billion. This, in turn, could amount to UAH 2 billion in unpaid taxes,” the BEB said in an official statement.
The investigation established that in order to cover up illegal activities, acting in prior agreement with officials of banking institutions of Ukraine and financial companies, both residents and non-residents, the mentioned group of persons in their activities used the details of 80 business entities with signs of fictitiousness.
In order to ensure the conduct of illegal financial transactions, their miscounting and avoidance of primary financial monitoring, the actual owners of these companies entered into a criminal conspiracy with bank officials.
Miscoding is a manipulation of this coding, when instead of the four-digit payment code 7995 related to gambling, any other one was indicated. Thus, sports betting or payments at online casinos in banks were processed as payments for video games , buying flowers, and so on. Or, on the other hand, the bank, having received money from the gambling business to pay the winnings to the player, sends it under the code of a completely different industry, or even conducting it as a regular transfer from card to card.
According to a number of media reports, at Kominbank, transactions using code 7994 - the purchase of video games - over the past one and a half to two years accounted for 90% of the total volume. And this, according to journalists, is more than 120 billion UAH.
The above-mentioned iBox bank, together with Kominbank, served the schemes of shady gambling business tycoons, according to the investigation, annually earned more than 2.5 billion UAH from gambling schemes. If the information from my colleagues regarding the volume of miscoding at Kominbank is correct, the order of the amounts of “gesheft” here is similar.
It is logical that the beneficiary of Kominbank is ready to pay both 135 million in fine and 235. Yes, even a billion - he will still remain in a huge plus. So this abscess in the bank can only be cured by revoking the license of the financial institution and subsequent criminal prosecution of its owner.
And with the owner of the Commercial Industrial Bank, everything is very interesting.
Since the end of 2016, Kominbank has been controlled by British citizen Stefan Paul Pinter ( as of March 8 of this year, 2023, he had 94.86% of the bank’s shares, another 5.14% belonged to the head of the board of the financial institution, Tatyana Putintseva). According to the official legend, a British investor acquired ComInBank for $5 million from a large Crimean scrap metal dealer, Evgeny Kazmin, in 2016.
According to Neweurope , Stefan Paul Pinter is the founding partner, CEO and chief investment officer of GML International Limited, a company founded in 1983 to provide corporate and government advice, debt collection and restructuring, debt conversion and large investments in emerging markets. The firm later expanded its activities to include originating and structuring new sources of financing for developing country banks, companies and governments in the international syndicated loan, bond and trade finance markets.
In 1996, GML launched its first investment fund, followed by a series of funds for emerging market lending, special situations and trade finance. It has representative offices in Kyiv, Moscow, Genoa, Tbilisi, Istanbul, Almaty, Bucharest and Belgrade. In 2007, the consulting and management areas were separated into a separate structure, GML Capital LLP. GML International Limited is the managing member of GML Capital LLP. The ultimate beneficiary of both companies in the British register is Stefan Paul Pinter.
Actually, GML International Limited and GML Capital LLP, which is part of its structure, are the sources of income for Stefan Pinter. And if you delve into the financial statements of these companies (you can find them here and here ), then a suspicion will arise that these “enterprises” could hardly generate capital for their beneficiary to purchase Kominbank in 2016. After all, their annual net profit was measured not in millions, but in hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling. That is, we dare to cautiously suggest that in this story Stefan Paul Pinter acts as a “pound”.
Who then bought Kominbank from Evgeny Kazmin? The author of these lines has a timid guess that this mysterious buyer is Evgeny Kazmin himself.
Let us recall that ComInBank for a long time belonged to the head of the EDAPS Yuri Sidorenko . In 2015, Crimean businessman Evgeny Kazmin agreed with Sidorenko to purchase the bank for $4.2 million. From that moment on, ComInBank was mired in scandals and criminal cases.
The former head of the ComInBank security service, Anatoly Mazur, told the details of the purchase of the financial institution by Kazmin.
According to him, the businessman did not have legal funds, so he had to deceive the National Bank during the purchase. The lawyer hired by Kazmin to formalize the purchase of the bank submitted a falsified declaration in a package of documents for the NBU, according to which the source of funds for the purchase of the bank was the sale of coins to a dead person, purchased from a dead person, and the transaction was formalized by a deceased notary. The NBU did not believe this story and did not allow Kazmin to register the bank in his name. As a result, legal entities established by employees of the Crimean businessman’s companies became the nominal shareholders of ComInBank.
In March 2016, Kazmin became the head of the bank’s supervisory board, and the National Bank soon recognized him as the final beneficiary of the financial institution .
On April 28, 2016, Kazmin was detained by SBU officers on suspicion of financing separatism in Crimea. In simple words, the SBU found out that after the annexation the businessman continued to conduct business on the occupied peninsula, paying taxes to the budget of the Russian Federation. Kazmin went to a pre-trial detention center.
Here it is necessary to say a few words about who Kazmin is and how he earned his “bread and butter”. Back in the early 2000s, he began collecting and recycling scrap metal in Sevastopol, and later added construction to this. Then the business expanded to the mainland, and the KVV Group group of companies appeared. Kazmin himself became a deputy of the Sevastopol City Council from the Party of Regions, and in 2012 he even appeared on the list of Yanukovych’s party in the elections to the Verkhovna Rada, but did not get into parliament.
When Russia occupied Crimea, Kazmin left for the mainland and stated that he was not doing business on the peninsula and had nothing to do with the ownership, strategic and operational management of construction sites on the peninsula.
It quickly became clear that this was not true, and the Kazmin family re-registered their assets in the Russian Federation and continued to work in Crimea. The publication "Krym.Realii" found out that the business of the large Kazmin family remaining in Crimea is extensive. Carbon LLC, previously owned by Evgeny Kazmin, has been actively building real estate in Sevastopol and other regions of the peninsula for many years.
In November 2014, the company was re-registered under Russian law. Then the name of Evgeniy Kazmin disappeared from the founders and leaders. At the moment, the company is owned by his brother Vladislav Kazmin.
In the State Register of Enterprises and Organizations of Russia there are other enterprises owned by members of the Kazmin family. They still receive large contracts from the state budget of the Russian Federation. Moreover, journalists found out that these companies, through a chain of offshore companies, helped Kazmin build housing in Ukraine.
In addition, the former head of the security service of the Kazmina holding, Anatoly Mazur, claims that even after the annexation of Crimea, the businessman illegally exported scrap from there to Turkey.
The SBU accused Evgeniy Kazmin of building housing in Crimea under his direct leadership, some of which was intended to be provided free of charge to employees of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the aggressor country. We are talking about the so-called “Town of Peace”, which the company “Carbon-Stroy”, owned by Kazmin, was erecting in the vicinity of Simferopol.
During the searches, a Russian passport was found on Kazmin. The investigation also received evidence of the businessman obtaining Russian citizenship. Among other things, during the search, investigators found a wristwatch with the image of the coat of arms of Russia and the inscription “Moscow-Kremlin”, apparently presented to the defendant for special services to the “new” fatherland.
However, despite the documentary evidence that appeared in the case, five months later the prosecutor leading the criminal proceedings petitioned to release Kazmin from criminal liability. The basis for this was allegedly the fact that the suspect voluntarily informed the investigation about his financial activities, which subsequently became the subject of the investigation, even before he was charged with the relevant article .
When the owner of KVV Group was released, he found out that he had lost part of the business. It was taken away by raiders by former business partners. Kazmin himself previously acted similarly when he raided the Kiev ATEK plant.
Despite the partial loss of business, Kazmin Bank remained. Back in the summer of 2016, while in jail, he allegedly sold the bank to a “foreign investor.” In fact, this was the re-registration of the financial institution to a figurehead - British investment banker Stefan Paul Pinter - in order to preserve the asset.
Despite the fact that the legal address of the bank is Bulvarno-Kudryavska, 6 in Kyiv, the real location of the office is Predslavinska, 28. It is at this address that the office of KVV Group Kazmina is located.
A source at the bank claimed that at Predslavinskaya, Kazmin personally takes part in board meetings and essentially manages the financial institution.
The bank's security service was headed by Andrey Ryazhsky, concurrently the head of the Security Service of the KVV Group. Until September 2016, Ryazhsky was the head of the Security Council of Kazmin’s Carbon company, which is still owned by the businessman’s family and pays taxes to the Russian budget.
Many KVV Group employees still work in the bank’s structure. And lawyer Evgeniy Porada, who in 2015 falsified documents for Kazmin’s purchase of the bank, is now deputy head of the supervisory board of ComInBank.
In the photographs, Kazmin stands next to the head of the bank’s board, Tatyana Putintseva. This photo was taken after 2019, when Putintseva headed the bank.
As we can see, there are good reasons to believe that Kominbank is still owned by Evgeny Kazmin, a citizen of the aggressor country.
