Alexey Efimovich Frenkel is a well-known Russian financier who headed the board of JSC VIP-Bank. In 2007, he was arrested on suspicion of ordering the murder of Andrei Kozlov. Sentenced to nineteen years in prison. This article will consider a brief biography of the banker.
Childhood
Alexey Frenkel was born in Moscow in 1971. But then the whole family moved to the small town of Volsk (Saratov region). Aleksey Efimovich's parents still live there, teaching chemistry at a military school. In Volsk, only kind words speak of the Frenkel family.
Aleksey studied at school number 2. Teachers remember him as a quiet, modest and non-confrontational child. In addition, Frenkel possessed curiosity and a sharp mind. Before coming to school, Alexey already knew how to write, read, play chess and knew mathematics very well. And in the seventh grade, the boy did tests for those who studied in the tenth. Periodically, he arranged a kind of test for teachers, asking difficult questions, the answers to which they had to look for in the library.
Work
In 1992, Alexey Frenkel graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University and immediately got a job at the Russian Joint-Stock Bank. A year later, the young man moved to the Neftyanoy financial institution, where he became the head of the currency department. In 1994-1995, Frenkel took the post of deputy chairman of the board of the bank. At the same time, he acted as chief accountant.
VIP Bank
In 2000 Alexey Frenkel came to the financial institution "Viza". Subsequently, the economist renamed it VIP Bank, joining the board and board of directors. Alexey Efimovich also wanted to include this institution in the number of participants in the DIS (deposit insurance system). But he met stiff resistance in the person of Andrey Kozlov (Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation).
In the middle of 2006, due to violations of the law, VIP-Bank's license was revoked. Some media reported that by this time all the clients of the financial institution had been transferred to the service of Europrominvest. According to SmartMoney magazine, the latter was part of the "Frenkel empire" - a number of credit institutions that helped entrepreneurs cash out money.
Europrominvest
In 2005 law enforcement agencies became interested in this bank. Then the inspectors were not satisfied with the documents for the cash found in the collection vehicle and cash desk. But they did not apply sanctions to Europrominvest. According to SmartMoney magazine, Alexey Frenkel tried to sell the institution to an Israelicredit institution Apoalim Bank, but Andrei Kozlov prevented this transaction.
In November 2006, the Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank revoked the license of Europrominvest. The main reason for this was the transfer of 38 billion rubles by the clients of this institution "as part of transactions of a dubious nature." After these events, Aleksey Efimovich decided to sue SmartMoney magazine for libel. A press release issued by VIP Bank emphasized that there was no Frenkel empire, and the financier's brother worked at Europrominvest.
The murder of the Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank
In September 2006, an attempt was made on Andrei Kozlov. He died a day later in the hospital. His driver Alexander Semyonov also died. On the fact of the murder, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case under article 105 (part 2).
A month later, the alleged killers were detained. And in November-December, a number of suspects, who, according to the investigation, were intermediaries between the perpetrator and customer of the crime. At the end of the year, Yuri Chaika announced that the case of Kozlov's murder had been solved.
Arrest
January 11, 2007 The Prosecutor General's Office told the media about the detention of the customer in the course of operational and investigative measures. In an interview with the Rossiya channel, Chaika did not rule out the possibility of arresting several more people involved in the crime in the near future. On the same day, a lawyer for a banker named Igor Trunov said that his client is considered the customer. Alexei Frenkel was taken into custody. January 12 MoscowThe Basmanny Court issued a permit for the detention of Liana Askerova, who, according to the investigation, was associated with financial structures and was suspected of involvement in the crime. And three days later, the same institution decided to arrest Frenkel. The Kommersant newspaper noted that the court considered it unacceptable to leave Aleksey Efimovich at large, since he could destroy all the evidence in the case and put pressure on witnesses. Frenkel's accusation was based only on Askerova's testimony. The lawyer of the financier has repeatedly stated that the girl deliberately slanders his client.
Accomplices
According to the investigation, Askerova helped Frenkel in search of assassins. The girl herself was not very versed in such matters, so she turned to Boris Shafray (Ukrainian businessman). In turn, the businessman went to Bohdan Pogorzhevsky (representative of criminal structures in the city of Lugansk). And he has already hired three killers for five thousand dollars - Alexander Belokopytov, Maxim Proglyad and Alexei Polovinkin. At that time, they worked part-time in the capital as a private driver. All three were inexperienced criminals, so they left a lot of traces at the scene of the murder, on which the police came to them. The killers agreed to cooperate and handed over Pogorozhevsky, who pointed the prosecutor's office at Shafrai.
The detained businessman did not testify and declared his innocence in the case. However, Askerova, having learned about the arrest of Boris, began to look for a lawyer for him, which attracted the attention of investigators. After her arrest, shetold the operatives about the customer of the murder - Frenkel.
Filing charges
According to media reports, Alexey Efimovich completely denied his involvement in contract killings. He considered the involvement of his person in this case "a provocation of the Central Bank against a strong opponent." In addition, the financier associated his arrest with a court hearing scheduled for January 15 regarding the revocation of the license from VIP Bank.
In early 2007, Alexei Frenkel was charged with organizing the assassination of the Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank. According to the NTV channel, the main motive of the financier was revenge on Kozlov for revoking licenses from Sodbiznesbank and VIP Bank. Allegedly, after the closure of these institutions for money laundering, the financier who took part in their creation suffered multi-billion dollar losses.
Notes of Alexei Frenkel
In January 2007, Kommersant reported on the banker's plans to accuse a number of Central Bank officials of corruption. Alexey Efimovich wanted to do this even before his arrest, but did not have time. The newspaper received a letter from Frenkel, in which the financier accused employees of the Central Bank (without giving names) of laundering money during the bankruptcy proceedings of Panemstroybank, Roskomveteranbank, as well as Regional Perspective and BBC banks.
According to Aleksey Efimovich, the Central Bank “…regulates a rather profitable cashing out market. He has mercy on those who carry out this operation and pay regularly. And those who refusego to the panel - punishes. According to Frenkel, the Central Bank deliberately created and maintained the illusion that the majority of Russian banks are engaged in money laundering. This was done with the aim of opening the Russian market to foreign institutions and further withdrawing billions of dollars abroad.
At the end of the same month, the hero of this article sent a letter "On guards and supervision" to Kommersant. The summer of 2006 is when, according to some sources, Aleksey Frenkel wrote it. Banking corruption in the deposit insurance system and the Central Bank became the key thoughts of the message. The financier also described the methods of giving bribes in the supervision of the Central Bank. In fact, in the text of the note, Aleksey Efimovich named the names of several officials he suspected of committing crimes. These are Andrey Kozlov, former head of the licensing department Mikhail Sukhov and deputy chairman for interaction with Rosfinmonitoring Viktor Melnikov. Based on Frenkel's letter, Kommersant concluded that the financier's goal was not specific accusations, but indications of systemic omissions in banking supervision leading to corruption. The publication also reported that the Central Bank refused to comment on topics related to the accusations of the hero of this article and corruption.
It should be noted that Alexei Frenkel's letters became scandalous immediately after publication. And according to this indicator, the third message called “Whose banks will you be?” interrupted the previous two. It was published in the media on February 6, 2007. In the note, Aleksey Efimovich revealed the functionaries of the Central Bank serving the interests of groups that are engaged in cashing out funds. ATthe publication of the message lacked the names of banks and surnames - the journalists replaced them with initials. But even so, it was easy to find out who was hiding under them (for example, the murdered Kozlov appeared in the note as "A. A. K."). This letter, like the previous two, was handed over to the press by Alexei Mamontov, head of the Interbank Currency Association (Moscow). At the same time, he stressed that this text is cuts from the first two messages, made on the basis of the inability to confirm the accusations.
Sentence
On March 1, 2007, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation applied to the Basmanny Court with a request to extend the arrest of the suspect. Aleksey Frenkel (a banker) instructed his lawyer to petition for his transfer to another pre-trial detention center. The fact is that after several publications in the media, a real threat loomed over the life of a banker. Frenkel's request was granted. Soon the financier was transferred to the Matrosskaya Tishina detention center.
In May 2007, the investigation into the murder of Andrei Kozlov was completed. The six defendants were given the opportunity to familiarize themselves with all the materials of the criminal case, numbering sixty volumes.
In November 2008, the hero of this article was sentenced to nineteen years in prison. Other defendants received different terms - from six years to life. Twelve months later, the court rejected the financier's cassation appeal, and the verdict entered into force. At the moment, Aleksey Efimovich Frenkel is serving a sentence in a strict regime colony FKU IK-8 in the city of Labytnangi (Yamal-Nenets Autonomouscounty). The banker will be released at the end of 2027.
Private life
Frenkel Alexey, whose biography was presented above, lived in a civil marriage with a girl named Larisa (mentioned in the complaint of the financier's lawyers about legislative violations committed during the search of his apartment). The couple has no children.
