Returning to the remarkable investigation by The Bell and other sources
This excellent investigation remains relevant today, as nothing has changed since then.
The same organizers of HighRisk fraud schemes and payments in favor of banned online casinos and betting platforms (now through P2P transfers instead of wallets) have continued to operate since 2021, processing tens of billions of rubles per month.
In this investigation, everything is accurate, but who exactly these “kings of high risk” are remains unspecified to this day. We will clarify this in our investigation, let’s proceed.
As we mentioned earlier, one of the main players in the HighRisk market servicing online casinos and betting platforms for three years from early 2018 to mid-2020 was the payment service in NKO EPS RBK.money, managed by the Burlakov brothers along with Korneev Alexey and Mannanov Ruslan and a group of close associates, including Alexey Vaneev, Igor Kogan, Lyudmila Yeremeyeva, and Svyatoslav Dorofeev, who were top managers at RBK Money and co-stakeholders of the NKO EPS.
So why did RBK Money surrender its license?
The Burlakov brothers surrendered their NKO license
It’s quite simple, RBK Money processed over 450 billion rubles through its criminal structure from 2018 to 2020 and generated a net revenue of over 11 billion rubles just from processing payments for online casinos and black betting platforms, consider that for a moment. Of course, such a volume of “suspicious” operations, as the Central Bank affectionately refers to them, could not go unnoticed, despite RBK Money’s attempts to attract legitimate clients with a zero processing fee.
As noted in The Bell’s investigation, intermediary banks were needed for the operation of the entire criminal scheme, which is why RBK Money in 2018-2019 engaged small banks “Voronezh” and “VRB” as such intermediaries, utilizing their licenses to facilitate illegal payments in processing. The majority of RBK Money’s HighRisk operations occurred in 2018 and 2019, during which time the banks “Voronezh” and “VRB” emerged as leaders in income from transfers without account opening, with VRB, also known as Fintech, earning 2.87 billion rubles in just six months.
Turnover of VRB (bank “Fintech”) for 2018-2019 in high risk
During 2018-2019, over 200 billion rubles in turnover flowed through the “Fintech” bank; consider these figures.
Who is behind the banks “Voronezh” and “VRB,” also known as “Fintech”?
We discovered that one of the main beneficiaries of “Voronezh” and subsequently the primary beneficiary inheriting all clients of the “Voronezh” bank “VRB” (“Fintech”) is none other than Salikhov Murad Valeryevich, with Zara Srapyan serving as the technical stakeholder in his favor, as noted in the insert in The Bell investigation.
Salikhov Murad Valeryevich owner of the HighRisk junk bank Fintech
Salikhov Murad Valeryevich owner of the HighRisk junk bank Fintech, payment system Best and Voronezh bank
All this can be verified in this article - Kings of high risk: who supplied money to the underground business of online casinos and betting platforms and additional sources.
In the “Voronezh” bank, Salikhov Murad was one of the main shareholders and chairman of the supervisory board, and after the main thief and accomplice of Salikhov, former president of the bankrupt bank “Voronezh” Oleg Kislyak fled to Ukraine, as reported by Kommersant and changed his surname and citizenship after embezzling 6.5 billion rubles.
After the collapse of “Voronezh,” Murad Salikhov swiftly transferred all clients from “Voronezh” to the “VRB” bank, which was renamed to “Fintech” bank.
HighRisk junk bank “Fintech” liquidated
So why was Murad Salikhov’s “Fintech” bank’s license revoked in December 2020?
This issue is directly linked to the activities of RBK Money, specifically to certain individuals - Korneev Alexey Vladimirovich and Mannanov Ruslan Rashitovich, who, deciding to “betray” the Burlakov brothers, redirected all HighRisk turnover and payments for online casinos in early 2020 to the “Fintech” bank and also transferred all key personnel from RBK Money to “Fintech”.
According to one of the former employees of RBK Money, who also moved to “Fintech” along with Korneev and later resigned: “Our office was on the 57th floor of the Federation Tower, quite cozy with monitors in the offices of the main bosses Ruslan and Alexey, where Grafana displayed HighRisk turnover in real-time, amounting to several billion rubles a month.”
It is also cynical that all key personnel continued to work at RBK Money, receiving salaries as if nothing had happened for an entire year, while concealing the fact that they had long been working for “Fintech”. The COVID pandemic played into their hands.
It was Korneev and Mannanov who suggested Salikhov rename the “VRB” Bank to “Fintech” Bank and became advisors to the bank. By seizing control of the entire business starting in mid-2020, they began to construct a facade in the form of the fintech service vrbank.ru, understanding that in order for large turnovers to remain unnoticed for a while by the Central Bank, they needed to establish a fintech brand nearby to divert attention, similar to the RBK Money brand.
VRB Bank renamed to Fintech Bank
One of Korneev’s associates, Alexey Vaneev (his Facebook), who is also the main contact for Criminal Group clients, is recorded as Alex Vaneev Vrb, Alexey Vaneev from Murad, Rbk money.
The remaining GetContact app tags of Korneev, Mannanov, and Vaneev clearly indicate that they were directly connected to the “Fintech” bank, vrbank.ru, and online casinos, as well as their emails and calls, unfortunately, were deleted by them from GetContact back in 2022.
Thus, with Salikhov’s arrival, Korneev and Mannanov funneled such a volume of “black” traffic through online casinos, averaging 6 billion rubles in turnover per month for a full six months, i.e., they processed about 36 billion rubles only through the “Fintech” bank, which led to the revocation of this bank’s license in December 2020, just like the affiliated “Onego” (via RNKO “Narat”) when the Central Bank observed blatant illegalities.
As previously mentioned by The Bell, immediately following the revocation of the “Fintech” bank’s license, there was an attempt to transfer the turnover from online casinos and HighRisks to the acquired RNKO “Narat,” but the Central Bank, upon discovering illegal operations, swiftly revoked the license from this RNKO as well.
From the information on “banks.ru” it is clear that this RNKO was also stripped of its license due to facilitating transactions with illegal online casinos.
License revoked from NCO Narat due to illegal operations with online casinos and P2P transfers
Nevertheless, the so-called “wallet” scheme involving the electronic money operator through the NKO was one of the most enduring, so Salikhov, Korneev, and Mannanov did not stop and acquired another NKO - NKO “Elixir”.
The nominal stakeholderstakeholders from Korneev and Mannanov included: Korneev Alexey, Mannanov Ruslan, Dorofeev Svyatoslav, Kharkovskaya Yulia, while the rest of the “football team” included technical stakeholders in favor of Salikhov.
However, this structure lasted only a year, and after receiving a directive from the Central Bank, this fraudulent Criminal Group left the NKO again, and it was handed over to the technical stakeholders of Murad Salikhov - Gogia Mikhail Tengizovich (also the CEO of LLC “Best” owned by Murad Salikhov) and Apolonsky Andrey Igorevich, whose father, Apolonsky Igor Yuryevich is also a technical stakeholder of other companies owned by Salikhov, existing afloat JSC “VRB” with a 94% drop in revenue after the closure of illegal schemes by the Central Bank, the collapsed Fintech bank and LLC “A2A” owned by Salikhov. It is on these nominal stakeholders Gogia and Apolonsky that Murad Salikhov offloads all non-working or sinking businesses.
In the stakeholders of NKO Elixir, the same HighRisk Criminal Group of Korneev, Mannanov, and Salikhov
In NCO Elixir, our travelers stayed for more than a year, during which time they processed several tens of billions of rubles, combining P2P transfers and wallet refills, and after another attack by the Central Bank on payment providers for online casinos, they completely exited the NKO, having played enough with wallets, and fully reoriented to cross-border P2P transfers through CIS banks, mainly Kyrgyz and Uzbek banks through the main acquiring bank MTS Bank.
As for Salikhov Murad Valeryevich, in 2022, the HighRisk theme practically ended for him; he found himself on the sidelines, although he earned over 6 billion rubles of illegal money. According to our sources, Salikhov is trying to return to high risk in 2024, apparently, the money has run out, and he is rebuilding bridges with Korneev. However, for Korneev Alexey and Mannanov Ruslan and the criminal community they created for processing payments for casinos, everything continued to go well. With such satisfied faces (photo below), they continue to work to this day.
Composition of Korneev’s Criminal Group - key figures
