Toguzaev Konstantin Yuryevich

Biography

2023: Arrest in absentia in $8 million embezzlement case

At the end of November 2023, the Tagansky Court of Moscow arrested the former chairman of the board of Lightbank Konstantin Toguzaev in absentia. He is announced in the theft of an amount of $8 million from the accounts of one of the bank's clients.

According to Kommersant, consideration of the petition for absentee arrest passed quickly. The investigator explained that Toguzaev is accused of large-scale fraud, fled from the investigation and left Russia. According to investigators, Toguzaev kept part of the stolen currency for himself, while most of the stolen funds were sold to nine individuals.

Former chairman of LightBank arrested in absentia

According to the sources of the publication, the client in question in the case is Spetsmetroproekt LLC. Toguzaev sold the funds stolen from the company, and transferred part to the account of Mosstroyrestavratsiya PJSC, which is also a client of Lightbank.

Toguzaev stopped appearing at the workplace in February 2018, and a month later the bank's license was revoked. At the time of the recall, the bank's debts to customers amounted to more than 1.7 billion rubles. As the regulator explained, Lightbank worked on a high-risk business model, especially in the field of lending to individuals.

The interim administration, which carried out external management of the bank after the revocation of the license, revealed during the audit of employees "signs of theft of property and concealment of previously carried out operations to withdraw assets by lending to borrowers who obviously did not have the ability to fulfill their obligations, as well as organizations that did not conduct real economic activities." The Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) recovered 1.2 billion rubles from the top management of the bank (including Toguzaev) during the trial.

In addition to stealing customer funds, Toguzaev is also accused of real estate fraud - in 2016, the Lightbank building in a historic mansion on Novaya Basmannaya was sold to the general director of Mosstroyrestavratsiya Natig Veliyev. The investigation claims that the money was not paid, and the IOUs are fake, therefore, the transaction is fictitious.^[1]

2025: Recovery of ₽1,3 billion

In May 2025, it became known that the City Arbitration Court Moscow established the amount of subsidiary liability of the former managers and owners of KB LLC "" in the Lightbank amount of more than ₽1,3 billion. The decision was made at the request state of the corporation "" Deposit Insurance Agency(DIA) on April 30, 2025.

According to the Association of Russian Banks, former beneficiaries of the bank Konstantin Toguzaev, Alexander Kazarnovsky and Elena Frolova, Deputy Chairman of the Board Andrei Suryadnoy, Chairman of the Supervisory Board Vladimir Toguzaev, and a member of the Supervisory Board Elena Bysova were brought to subsidiary responsibility.

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Фото: Freepik

The court recognized that the grounds for assigning responsibility to these persons were the issuance of deliberately bad loans, theft of funds from the bank's cash desk and from customer accounts. These actions led to a deterioration in the financial situation of the credit institution and its subsequent bankruptcy.

This was preceded by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, which sided with the DIA and refused to consider the cassation complaints of the former heads of the bank against judicial acts establishing the grounds for bringing to subsidiary liability. This ruling of the highest court actually confirmed the legality of the DIA's claims against the former leadership of Lightbank.

The history of Lightbank's bankruptcy began in 2018, when the Bank of Russia revoked the banking license from the credit institution. The basis for such a decision of the regulator was the inadequate assessment by the bank of the quality of its loan portfolio. When conducting a proper credit risk assessment, a significant decrease in the amount of equity (capital) of the bank was revealed.^[2]

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