The Rossiya Bank (Bank Rossiya (), in Russian: Акционерный коммерческий банк Россия, АКБ Россия) is a Russian joint stock bank founded on June 27, 1990. The company's headquarters are in Saint Petersburg.
The bank has been associated with the Vladimir Putin regime in Russia. The Pandora Papers leak revealed that the bank built a network of shadow companies that kept offshore wealth for Russian elites.
History
Communist Party ownership and 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt
On August 23, 1990, a secret memorandum from Vladimir A. Ivashko, who was Gorbachev's deputy general secretary, was issued to organize the transfer of CPSU funds, CPSU financing and support of its operations through associations, ventures, foundations, etc. which are to act as invisible economics. Bank Rossiya was one of the hundreds of entreprises that CPSU financiers used to funnel the party gold away.
In 1990, the CPSU committee of the Leningrad Oblast became Rossiya Bank largest shareholder (48.4%), but after the coup attempt in August 1991 the bank's activity was frozen on 2 September 1991 as it was CPSU-related. It was the first commercial bank to hold accounts for the foreign economic operations of both the regional committee of the CPSU and the local management of the KGB.
In December 1991 its activity was resumed, as the shares had been redeemed on 29 December 1991 by some member ventures of the Leningrad Association of Joint Ventures, shares of which were held by Vladimir Yakunin, Yuriy Kovalchuk, Mikhail Markov, Viktor Myachin, Andrei Fursenko, Sergey Fursenko, Yury Nikolayev.
JV Neva Chance
The Austrian Russian joint venture JV Neva Chance received funds from the Revival of St. Petersburg Foundation (), which was co-founded by Anatoly Sobchak and its CEO Alexander Margolis (). A Los Angeles branch of the St. Petersburg Foundation was established by Mark Davidovich Lvovich (; b. Soviet Union), also known as Mark Neumann (), who founded and headed the California firm Trada that received several hundred thousand dollars of "funds of UNI-REM" () which Sergei Bagaev (), a colleague of Anatoly Sobchak at Leningrad University, headed. Leon Weinstein (), an assistant to Neuman at the Los Angeles branch, and his wife Gulnara Afanasyeva () were active with the St. Petersburg Foundation when it sponsored Sobchak's visit to Los Angeles.
JV Neva Chance established thirty companies including JV Casino Neva.
Putin's capital support from Leningrad casinos
Beginning in 1991, Vladimir Putin was St Petersburg's chairman of the supervisory board for casinos and gambling () and, in 1993, began issuing gambling licenses in which shares were gained by the city of St Petersburg in the company Neva Chance () which owned the first St Petersburg casino AOZT Casino () because it had the same address and phone numbers as city hall, but later it became JV Casino Neva () and opened on 19 August 1991. In 1992 or 1993 it changed its name to Laguna, then in 1997 to Admiral Club or more simply known as Admiral. According to the Yakuza Kinichi Kamiyasu who supplied slot machines with cash prizes to St Petersburg casinos in the 1990s from his Stockholm, Sweden, company Dyna Computer Service AB which was a subsidiary of the Masimichi Iida () () owned Osaka firm, Dyna Company Ltd., the criminals Gennady Petrov (), Alexander Malyshev (), and Sergey Kuzmin () operated the casino through a Vladimir Putin issued license in order to establish JV Petrodin () in 1991. JV Petrodin, which Kamiyasu owned a 35% stake and Gennady Petrov and Sergey Kuzmin owned a 65% stake through their company BXM (), used the money from the casinos to provide capital for Bank Rossiya.