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Biography
2024: Arrest in absentia on charges of issuing a loan of 3 billion rubles to himself
In October 2024, the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow arrested Dmitry Romaev, former chairman of the board of Otkritie FC Bank, in absentia. The ex-banker is charged with embezzlement of ₽3 billion by issuing a loan to a Cypriot company controlled by him. The accused left the territory of Russia in February 2020 and lives abroad.
According to Kommersant, the investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in 2023 opened a criminal case against Dmitry Romaev under part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (especially large embezzlement). According to investigators, in the period 2016-2017, Romaev, holding the post of chairman of the supervisory board of Otkritie FC Bank, organized the issuance of a loan in the amount of ₽3 billion to the Cypriot company Benirlia Holdings Limited, which, presumably, was under his control.
The borrowing company has not returned the funds received and is currently (October 2024) in liquidation. Dmitry Romaev himself, who also has Cypriot citizenship in addition to Russian citizenship, left Russia, flying to the United Arab Emirates. According to sources of the publication, the ex-banker lives in Monaco.
The Romaev case is part of a large-scale investigation led by the Investigative Committee of Russia and the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for more than six years. Law enforcement agencies are studying numerous episodes of alleged fraud of the former management of Otkritie Bank, as a result of which hundreds of billions of rubles were withdrawn from a credit institution, according to security officials.
Other defendants in the theft case at Otkritie include former co-owner of the group Boris Mints, ex-chairman of the board Yevgeny Dankevich, founder of the group Vadim Belyaev and former member of the board of Otkritie Holding Mikhail Nazarychev. All of them are outside of Russia.[1]