top of page
Writer's pictureSun Of Justice

QBF Investment: The Criminal Activities Were Covered Up by Regulators/Authorities in UK, RU & Cyprus

Updated: Apr 21


 The Unseen Hand: QBF Investment Company's Alleged Criminal Activities Covered Up by Authorities in the UK, Russia and Cyprus | QBF, NOA CIRCLE, LBX, and Argento revealed to be an organised criminal group and the regulators in the UK, Russia and Cyprus ignored all warnings;  or choose to ignore all consumer reports.


Investors of QBF cannot take their money and call Roman Shpakov's brainchild a financial pyramid.

Company information and customer reviews


Qubief Financial Group (QBF) is engaged in trust management and promises up to 30% profitability to its investors. And after he accepts the money, he draws reports and refuses to issue funds under various pretexts. This is what users write in the discussion on banka and in other publications.


There is an example of a pensioner who kept money in the company, and when he tried to withdraw it to pay for treatment, he realized that he would no longer see his savings.

Customers say that they believed expensive advertising and representative offices, some gave the company impressive sums. And when it was time to pick them up, instead of the long-awaited payments, we received requests for documents and requirements to sign new contracts with third-party organizations. The most persistent have been trying to take away their deposits for more than six months.


How the scheme works and who is behind it- Roman Shpakov

The organizer of the QBF is Roman Valeryevich Shpakov, whose corruption adventures have already been written by Kommersant. To receive money, he uses many legal entities that change the founders and are liquidated as necessary. Part of the amounts really goes to the stock exchange to create the appearance of work, and the bulk flows to Shpakov's offshore and other projects, as evidenced by the analysis of affiliated companies. At the same time, transactions are formalized legally competently, which allows "financial managers" to win in civil courts.


Juggling by firms is as follows:

The first "Cubief" JSC was liquidated in 2019. Before the liquidation, Shpakov's share was blurred from one hundred to one percent through an increase in the authorized capital from ten thousand to one million rubles. That is, even if there are demands and attempts to bring to subsidiary responsibility, the organizer remains out of business.

Next is a long list of subsidiaries that are changing their names and liquidating at the moment. "Cubief Consulting" LLC was renamed "F-Technology" LLC and filed for liquidation. Cuban Advisors LLC will be liquidated without renaming. "Kyubief Management" LLC changes its name to "F-Management" LLC and so on, such metamorphoses are present in all subsidiaries, along with debts and fines from the tax authorities.

In addition, there are many other legal entities under the "brand" of Cubief, such as Cubief Investment Company LLC, which was just a defendant in the mentioned claim for 11 million. Or LLC "KG" (Cubee group), which shows negative profit and is the founder of other companies, in particular LLC "Cubesfe", which became the legal successor of LLC IC "Cubesfe", but with an authorized capital of only 10,000 rubles. The full responsibility for the obligations of the previous "investment company" now lies with the empty firm that submits zero reports.

In addition, Roman Shpakov owns the development companies M1 Invest LLC, Severspetsstroy LLC and Simon Jesso LLC, where, according to depositors, a significant part of the money is spent, because they are regularly offered to invest in construction projects of these organizations.


What now?

Affected QBF customers, after unsuccessful attempts to obtain their funds, reported to the police and prosecutor's office, and also asked the Central Bank to check the company's activities. It remains to wait for decisions and see if the economic climate is going to change.

And we will remind you that before trusting anyone with significant amounts, you should check the company and related persons in detail. Reasonable doubts will save you a lot of money and nerves.



MARK SARMATOV13.05.2022



Roman Shpakov was weighted by the "derce" of underground millionaires

As it became known, the investigation recognized the six participants of a large financial pyramid operating under the eg of the investment company QBF as members of an organized criminal association (OPS). Instead of the promised investment of funds received from clients in serious financial portfolios, the alleged fraudsters withdrew money offshore. At the moment, the damage caused to investors is more than 2 billion rubles. And taking into account the VIPs invested in QBF, who have not yet recognized themselves as victims, the amount of theft can be about 5-7 billion rubles.


The Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has been in the activities of a large investment company QBF for a little more than a year. During this time, law enforcement officers came to the conclusion that in addition to particularly large fraud (Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) in the actions of the participants of the financial pyramid there are all the signs of the OPS (Art. 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). As a result, six defendants in this criminal case were recently accused of this article, and two of them were charged in absentia. The investigation considers Roman Shpakov, a beneficiary of the QBF financial group, who is allegedly hiding in London, to be the organizer of the crime. He has already been put on the international wanted list. In the near future, according to the editorial office, a similar fate awaits the citizen of Cyprus Linda Atanasiadou. The investigation considered that she was responsible for finances in the QBF. Four more defendants, three of whom are in jail, have already been charged with participation in the OPS in person. We are talking about the co-founder of QBF LLC, who previously headed the Cyprus branch of the company, Zelimkhan Munayev, the lawyer of this structure Evgenia Rossieva, the head of the St. Petersburg office of QBF LLC Alexey Golubev and the director of the branch network of the company Vladimir Pakhomov, who is under house arrest.


The Tver Court of Moscow arrested the head of the St. Petersburg office of the investment company QBF Alexey Golubev and the director of the branch network of the company Vladimir Pakhomov in the case of fraud on a particularly large scale, the press service of the court reported to RAPSI. "The Tver District Court issued a decision on the election of a preventive measure to Golubev in the form of detention until January 30, 2022. Pakhomov was elected to house arrest for a similar term. The court refused to satisfy the investigator's request to elect a preventive measure in the form of detention," the agency's interlocutor specified.

The defendants were charged with committing a crime under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud on a particularly large scale). In July this year, the Central Bank revoked QBF licenses for brokerage, dealer, depository and securities management activities due to the fact that the company did not comply with the instructions of the Central Bank, as well as did not comply with the requirements for the internal accounting system and for the implementation of depository activities.


As the editorial office has already told, the basis for initiating a criminal case was first the single appeals of citizens received by the Department of Internal Affairs in the Western District of Moscow. After the claims against QBF managers began to number in dozens, the case was transferred to the investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for further investigation, and employees of the GUEBiPK and the capital's UFSB joined the operational and search activities. At the end of May 2021, a large-scale special operation took place with their participation with the support of special forces in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In total, more than 30 searches were carried out, including at the head office of QBF, which occupied several floors in the complex "City of Capitals" (Presnenskaya embankment, 8, building 1) "Moscow-City".


According to the investigation, the company attracted citizens' funds under the guise of investing in serious financial portfolios in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, Murmansk regions, as well as Bashkiria and Tatarstan. However, instead, the money was transferred to the accounts of QCCI Ltd (Cyprus), Simtelligence (Hong Kong) and White Lake ltd (Cayman Islands), from where it was later transferred to the current accounts of other non-resident companies affiliated, according to the investigation, with members of the group. They were disposed of by the alleged organizers of the pyramid at their own discretion, investing in the purchase of shares, real estate, expensive cars and other things.

At the same time, almost everyone who trusted Roman Shpakov's team was sure that their money worked and made a profit, as managers sent them fictitious monthly and quarterly reports by e-mail.

Investors' problems began when trying to withdraw their money from QBF. Customers were denied this under various pretexts, and when the arguments ran out, they simply stopped answering phone calls.

It is worth noting that in order to maintain the company's reputation, some of the depositors still paid dividends. However, this was done exclusively at the expense of subsequent clients.


At the moment, it has been established that the damage caused to investors by QBF LLC (depried of license on July 8, 2021) is more than 2 billion rubles. However, it follows from the documentation seized during the searches that in fact about 5-7 billion rubles could have been stolen from investors. This discrepancy in figures is due to the fact that there were many VIPs among QBF clients, including clergy, generals, ministers, directors of various large state and commercial structures. However, none of those who gave 200-300 million rubles to the alleged fraudsters wants to advertise their losses yet and, accordingly, was not included in the official list of victims. According to the police, it was on wealthy clients who had access to budget money, that the QBF business was oriented. As the participants of the pyramid assumed, the latter, having lost large sums, did not apply to law enforcement agencies because of the inability to prove the legality of their origin.

In addition to studying shadow schemes, investigators check QBF customers and the origin of their money. According to preliminary data, there were officials among them. According to the Ural media, former officials of the Yekaterinburg Administration, including Vice-mayor Ilya Borzenkov, were suspected by the regional Investigative Committee. Investigators suspect that they allegedly transferred budget money through consulting contracts and a network of underlieuated firms to QBF, from where they went offshore and disappeared there. The amount of the alleged damage is estimated at six billion rubles.

Security forces believe that officials could withdraw money through development projects. For example, this is the Gribovsky Forest Residential Complex in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region. The complex is built by Simon Jesso, the founder of which is Roman Shpakov. In 2014, the scandalous Yekaterinburg entrepreneur Valery Arsenchuk became a co-owner of the company. It was his company that completed the residential complex "Nightingales" of the company "Dombery" in Yekaterinburg, which was owned by the famous bard Alexander Novikov. The activities of the developer in his homeland were associated with a number of high-profile scandals. According to SPARK, in March this year Roman Shpakov formally transferred his share to a certain Denis Sorokin. The share of Sorokin and Arsenchuk are now pledged by Sberbank, which actually controls the development.

Life received documents, according to which in 2019 Maxim Borzenkov, the son of the former vice-mayor of Yekaterinburg, received several dozen transfers to his bank account for a total amount of almost 9 million dollars and 438 million rubles. According to SPARK, Borzenkov Jr. has nowhere to get such wealth. He is the owner of the now abandoned company "Warehouse Technologies", which is managed by his father. The company's accounts were blocked back in 2017.





MARK SARATOV26.05.2022





The path from the Central Bank to the OPS was not long

Stanislav Matyukhin, the grandson of the former chairman of the Central Bank, Georgy Matyukhin, was detained in Moscow. The latter was the CEO of a large financial pyramid operating under the ignor of the investment company QBF. Like the previously arrested top managers, he is charged with participation in an organized criminal community (OPS), which has snatched at least 2 billion rubles from investors. After the flight abroad of the beneficiary of the QBF financial group Roman Shpakov, it was Mr. Matyukhin who convinced investors before the company's license was revoked that they should not worry about their savings.


On Wednesday morning, a very solid landing of employees of the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, their district colleagues, as well as employees of the capital's FSB, landed near the house on Kutuzovsky Avenue, where 36-year-old Stanislav Matyukhin lives. The detention for the former top manager of QBF was hardly a big surprise, given that many of his colleagues have already been arrested or are on the run. It should be noted that the search in Mr. Matyukhin's apartment was not carried out, since the relevant event, according to the editorial office, had already been carried out there twice before, while the defendant was in the status of a witness.


The grandson of the former Chairman of the Central Bank Georgy Matyukhin (headed the Central Bank from 1990 to 1992) was appointed General Director of QBF in 2017. Before that, he managed to work in the Federal Service for Financial Markets and the same Central Bank. And in the latter, he was actually the curator of the QBF. As Deputy Head of the Licensing Department of Joint-Stock Investment Funds, Management Companies, Specialized Depositories and Non-State Pension Funds of the Department of Regulation and Control over Collective Investments, Mr. Matyukhin dealt with the regulation of the activities of financial companies from the moment of their establishment to the termination of activities.

At QBF, Stanislav Matyukhin carried out general management of investment and management companies. One of the main tasks of the manager at the new place of work was to expand the sales channel. Apparently, the detainee coped with his tasks very successfully.


However, as it turned out during the investigation of a criminal case initiated last year by the investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the fact of a particularly large fraud (Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), the funds received from clients instead of the promised investment in serious financial portfolios were withdrawn offshore.


At the moment, the damage caused to depositors is more than 2 billion rubles.


According to law enforcement officers, the alleged organizers of fraud invested this money in the purchase of shares, real estate, expensive cars, etc. Part of the assets estimated at about 1 billion rubles has already been seized by the court.


Recently, six participants of the financial pyramid, including QBF beneficiary Roman Shpakov, who is hiding abroad, were also relied with organizing a criminal association and participating in it (Art. 210 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). According to the editorial office, a similar charge will soon be brought against Stanislav Matyukhin, who was detained for two days. The investigation intends to petition the court for his arrest.


The defendant himself both in the status of a witness and now, being a suspect, denies his guilt both in embezzlement of money and participation in the OPS. According to him, he just "tried to save the sinking ship" and allegedly did not make any serious capital from participating in the QBF. However, the investigation has yet to check this. In the meantime, it is known that he purchased his apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, 22 (a ten-minute walk from the company's office in Moscow City on Presnenskaya Embankment) as a QBF employee.


It should be noted that after the detention of colleagues, it was Stanislav Matyukhin who actually had to convince customers that they had no reason to worry about their savings until the company's license was revoked (July 8, 2021). However, only a few were lucky. Among them was, for example, the famous ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, who invested about 3 million rubles in the brainchild of Mr. Shpakov. And then, returning part of the invested funds (500 thousand rubles), Mr. Matyukhin, according to the investigation, counted on the fact that Mrs. Volochkova, taking advantage of her connections, would help to unlock the company's accounts in the regions. However, she did not do it, after which QBF employees stopped contacting her. And Mr. Matyukhin only advised all further questions on the return of the remaining 1.7 million rubles to the beneficiary of the QBF financial group Roman Shpakov. Georgy Matyukhin

The fate of Georgy Matyukhin would be enough for four people: geologist, intelligence officer, financial scientist, first chairman of the Central Bank of Russia

- Did you have to give money for information? - Of course, and large sums. Who works for be healthy? But we had extremely honest people back then. In Moscow, they give you a suitcase of dollars without an account and a receipt, and you have to transfer this money to the agent. You can't take a receipt from him either. Agree, it would be strange to write this: "I got so much for espionage activities, which I sign." Everything was honest. Why can't intelligence work now? Such people have been out.

- Until December 1991, together with the Central Bank of Russia, there was also the State Bank of the USSR, which was headed by Viktor Gerashchenko. How was your relationship? - With Gerashchenko, I studied in graduate school and knew him - he was a protege of the CPSU. And in 1991 there were indeed two banks: the State Bank of the USSR and the Central Bank of the RSFSR. But since their goals were different, there was a constant struggle between them: the State Bank of the USSR in every possible way hindered the development of the independent banking system of Russia. It was worth making some decision by the Central Bank, as followed by the telegram of the State Bank, which canceled it.

In January 1991, Gerashchenko underwent a monetary reform, they decided to exchange two banknotes of the highest nominal value: 50 and 100 rubles. Allegedly, billions of cash have accumulated in the shadow economy and abroad. A huge hype began, people rushed to exchange money. And I, the chairman of the Central Bank, learned about this reform three hours before the cancellation of the old bills. The calculation of the State Bank of the USSR was that the Russian banking system would not cope with the load and all reform work could be declared harmful. Fortunately, we did it. And in 1992, after I wrote a letter of resignation, Gerashchenko was appointed in my place.

- What do you think, at that moment there was some kind of fork, another path that could be taken and avoided further economic decline? - It's hard to say. Everything is decided by people, and I haven't seen people with common sense in power. The basic principle of the 1990s was: "Ge on." And a whole generation is gone. People quit studying, realized that money can be earned without education. Do you remember the song? "Yesterday I'm an athlete, and today I'm a racketeman."






BY MARK SARMATOV ON 19.01.2022

Roman Shpakov, the beneficiary of the QBF group, which stole up to 7 billion rubles of investors, left through the Emirates


The name of the beneficiary of the QBF financial group Roman Shpakov appeared in the international database of wanted by Interpol.


The investigation considers him the organizer of the pyramid, which, under the guise of investing depositors' money in serious financial portfolios, could steal about 5-7 billion rubles from them. Even before the criminal case, Mr. Shpakov left for the United Arab Emirates, and since October last year allegedly settled in London.


The defendant in the criminal case of fraud on a particularly large scale (Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) Roman Shpakov, a 33-year-old beneficiary of the investment company QBF, became at the end of May 2021. Then, as part of a large-scale special operation with the participation of the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the capital's FSB with the support of special forces in Moscow and St. Petersburg, more than 30 searches were carried out, including in the head office of QBF, which occupied several floors in the complex "City of Capitals" in "Moscow City" (Presnenskaya embankment, 8, building 1).


The first operatives detained the 30-year-old co-founder of QBF LLC, who previously headed the Cyprus branch of the company, Zelimkhan Munayev and 47-year-old lawyer of this structure Evgeny Rossiyeva. Both were sent to the pre-trial detention center by the Tver District Court of the Tver District Court of Moscow at the request of the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Another defendant, the director of the company's branch network, Vladimir Pakhomov, was under house arrest. Roman Shpakov was already abroad by that time, where he moved, barely learning about the interest of law enforcement officers in his brainchild.


Vladimir Pakhomov (left) and Zelimkhan Munayev

On September 27 last year, the same Tver District Court authorized the arrest in absentia of the alleged organizer of a multi-billion-dollar scam. The other day, the name of Roman Shpakov appeared in the international database of wanted persons through Interpol. It is worth noting that until recently, the founder of QBF, according to Kommersant, lived in the UAE. However, soon after his arrest in absentia, he moved to London, where he allegedly has real estate.


Apparently, the businessman expects that, unlike the Emirates, he will not be extravoued from the UK in case of detention to the initiator of the search.

Kommersant.Ru, 01.12.2021, "The police went through the branch network": As part of the investigation of a high-profile criminal case of particularly large fraud (Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) with the funds of depositors of the QBF financial group, new detentions were carried away. In St. Petersburg on Nevsky Prospekt, an operational and investigative team that arrived from Moscow detained the head of the local office of the group, 31-year-old Alexei Golubev. [...] According to Kommersant, Alexey Golubev responded with memorized templates from memos specially written for QBF management. These were found on each table during searches this spring in the "City of Capitals" complex in "Moscow City", where the company rented several floors. [...]


The investigation believes that the internationally wanted founder of QBF Roman Shpakov was the organizer of a large-scale scam, during which, under the guise of investing depositors' money in serious financial portfolios, could have been stolen from them. Even before the criminal case was initiated, he managed to leave for the UAE. Allegedly, it was from there that after the publication in Kommersant that the famous ballerina Anastasia Volochkova (whose QBF owes 1.7 million rubles) was recognized as a victim in the case, that Mr. Shpakov began to call other deceived VIP clients who are not in a hurry to contact the police yet. In exchange for refusing to apply to law enforcement agencies, the businessman allegedly promises to return the money invested to them. However, it looks more like an attempt to organize a PR campaign. In any case, this opinion is shared by ordinary victims.


In their opinion, Roman Shpakov may well give their money to well-known customers in the hope that they will convey this information to their friends and acquaintances. And those, in turn, will invest in his new projects, because the management left at large continues to collect money, but already in organizations under other names. Moreover, after the Central Bank revoked the license from QBF on July 8, 2021, a week ago the call of customers with offers to invest their funds profitably continued. - Introka K.ru


As Kommersant already told, the investigation established that citizens' funds were attracted by the company under the guise of investing in serious financial portfolios in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, Murmansk regions, as well as Bashkiria and Tatarstan.


QBF managers lured customers with the opportunity to earn about 20% on investing. To maintain the reputation of the firm, some of them did pay dividends, but exclusively at the expense of subsequent investors. At the same time, almost everyone who trusted Roman Shpakov's team was sure that their money worked and made a profit, as managers sent them fictitious monthly and quarterly reports by e-mail.


Investors' problems began when trying to withdraw their money from QBF. Customers were denied this under various pretexts, and when the arguments ran out, they simply stopped answering phone calls.

The investigation found that all investors' funds were transferred to the accounts of QCCI LTD (Cyprus), Simtelligence (Hong Kong) and White Lake ltd (Cayman Islands), from where they were subsequently transferred to the current accounts of other non-resident companies affiliated with members of the group. They were disposed of by the alleged organizers of the pyramid at their own discretion, investing in the purchase of expensive cars and real estate, shares, etc.


In total, investigators believe that the organizers of the pyramid could have stole about 5-7 billion rubles.

This range of figures can be explained by the fact that there were many VIPs among QBF clients, including clergy, generals, ministers, directors of various large state and commercial structures. And they gave the alleged fraudsters someone 200-300 million rubles, and some 1 billion rubles each. However, for various reasons, they not only do not want to publicize their losses, but also refuse the status of victims.

So far, only the famous ballerina Anastasia Volochkova is among the star victims in this case. Her QBF owes 1.7 million rubles out of the invested 3 million rubles.


Kommersant.Ru, 18.11.2021, "Pyramid liked the prima": On July 31, 2020, Anastasia Volochkova arrived at the QBF office, located in the "City of Capitals" complex (Presnenskaya Embankment, 8, building 1) in "Moscow City". There she signed a contract for a period of one year, and a few days later she transferred 2 million rubles to the company's account at 10% per annum. After a while, Timur convinced Mrs. Volochkova to transfer them another 1 million rubles for a period of three months. "For the last three months, I received empty payment orders from QBF without amounts and without any signatures, which alarmed me a bit," says Anastasia Volochkova. As a result, the prima, unlike hundreds of other victims, managed to return not only its million, but also the profit from the deposit - 150 thousand rubles after the agreed period. But no one was in a hurry to return 2 million in August 2021 to Mrs. Volochkova. After the searches that employees of the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs conducted in May this year as part of a criminal case of particularly large fraud (Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), QBF has almost curtailed its work.


"Then I reached the CEO of QBF Stanislav Matyukhin, who promised that the money would be returned to me in parts, and at the same time asked me to use my connections and help them unblock the company's accounts in St. Petersburg and, in my opinion, in Bashkiria. I didn't do it, but 500 thousand rubles were still returned to me," Anastasia Volochkova summed up.


After that, QBF employees stopped contacting the client - Mr. Matyukhin only advised all further questions on the return of the remaining 1.7 million rubles to address to the beneficiary of the QBF financial group Roman Shpakov. - Vrezka K.ru


It should be noted that QBF LLC ceased its activities on July 8, 2021, after the regulator canceled the license. By that time, some clients were trying to get their money back in civil proceedings. However, as practice shows, it turned out to be very problematic to do so. For example, the CEO of a large online store specializing in the sale of IT and network equipment failed to win the case.


In March 2021, even before the initiation of a criminal case, the businessman tried to recover more than $550 thousand from the defendants, including Roman Shpakov, in the Presnensky District Court of the capital. "During the consideration of the case, I did not find confirmation of the receipt of funds from the plaintiff to any of the defendants," the court decision says. Yesterday it was upheld by the appellate court.



London hides a guest of the "City of Capitals"

MARK SARMATOV20.01.2022BROTHER

London hides a guest of the "City of Capitals"

The beneficiary of the QBF group Roman Shpakov is trying to search for around the world

As it became known to the editorial office, the name of the beneficiary of the QBF financial group Roman Shpakov appeared in the international database of wanted by Interpol. The investigation considers him the organizer of the pyramid, which, under the guise of investing depositors' money in serious financial portfolios, could steal about 5-7 billion rubles from them. Even before the criminal case, Mr. Shpakov left for the United Arab Emirates, and since October last year allegedly settled in London.


The defendant in the criminal case of fraud on a particularly large scale (Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) Roman Shpakov, a 33-year-old beneficiary of the investment company QBF, became at the end of May 2021. Then, as part of a large-scale special operation with the participation of the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the capital's FSB with the support of special forces in Moscow and St. Petersburg, more than 30 searches were carried out, including in the head office of QBF, which occupied several floors in the complex "City of Capitals" in "Moscow City" (Presnenskaya embankment, 8, building 1).


The first operatives detained the 30-year-old co-founder of QBF LLC, who previously headed the Cyprus branch of the company, Zelimkhan Munayev and 47-year-old lawyer of this structure Evgeny Rossiyeva. Both were sent to the pre-trial detention center by the Tver District Court of the Tver District Court of Moscow at the request of the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Another defendant, the director of the company's branch network, Vladimir Pakhomov, was under house arrest. Roman Shpakov was already abroad by that time, where he moved, barely learning about the interest of law enforcement officers in his brainchild.

Vladimir Pakhomov (left) and Zelimkhan Munayev

On September 27 last year, the same Tver District Court authorized the arrest in absentia of the alleged organizer of a multi-billion-dollar scam. The other day, the name of Roman Shpakov appeared in the international database of wanted persons through Interpol. It is worth noting that until recently, the founder of QBF, according to the editorial office, lived in the UAE. However, soon after his arrest in absentia, he moved to London, where he allegedly has real estate.

Apparently, the businessman expects that, unlike the Emirates, he will not be extravoued from the UK in case of detention to the initiator of the search.

As part of the investigation of a high-profile criminal case of particularly large fraud (Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) with the funds of depositors of the QBF financial group, new detentions were carried away. In St. Petersburg on Nevsky Prospekt, an operational and investigative team that arrived from Moscow detained the head of the local office of the group, 31-year-old Alexei Golubev. Alexey Golubev answered with memorized templates from memos specially written for QBF management. These were found on each table during searches this spring in the "City of Capitals" complex in "Moscow City", where the company rented several floors.

The investigation believes that the internationally wanted founder of QBF Roman Shpakov was the organizer of a large-scale scam, during which, under the guise of investing depositors' money in serious financial portfolios, could have been stolen from them. Even before the criminal case was initiated, he managed to leave for the UAE. Allegedly, it was from there after the publication that the famous ballerina Anastasia Volochkova (its QBF owes 1.7 million rubles) was recognized as a victim in the case, that Mr. Shpakov began to call other deceived VIP clients who are not in a hurry to contact the police yet. In exchange for refusing to apply to law enforcement agencies, the businessman allegedly promises to return the money invested to them. However, it looks more like an attempt to organize a PR campaign. In any case, this opinion is shared by ordinary victims.

In their opinion, Roman Shpakov may well give their money to well-known customers in the hope that they will convey this information to their friends and acquaintances. And those, in turn, will invest in his new projects, because the management left at large continues to collect money, but already in organizations under other names. Moreover, after the Central Bank revoked the license from QBF on July 8, 2021, a week ago the call of customers with offers to invest their funds continued from there a week ago.

During the investigation, it was established that citizens' funds were attracted by the company under the guise of investing in serious financial portfolios in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, Murmansk regions, as well as Bashkiria and Tatarstan.

QBF managers lured customers with the opportunity to earn about 20% on investing. To maintain the reputation of the firm, some of them did pay dividends, but exclusively at the expense of subsequent investors. At the same time, almost everyone who trusted Roman Shpakov's team was sure that their money worked and made a profit, as managers sent them fictitious monthly and quarterly reports by e-mail.


Investors' problems began when trying to withdraw their money from QBF. Customers were denied this under various pretexts, and when the arguments ran out, they simply stopped answering phone calls.

The investigation found that all investors' funds were transferred to the accounts of QCCI LTD (Cyprus), Simtelligence (Hong Kong) and White Lake ltd (Cayman Islands), from where they were subsequently transferred to the current accounts of other non-resident companies affiliated with members of the group. They were disposed of by the alleged organizers of the pyramid at their own discretion, investing in the purchase of expensive cars and real estate, shares, etc.


In total, investigators believe that the organizers of the pyramid could have stole about 5-7 billion rubles.

This range of figures can be explained by the fact that there were many VIPs among QBF clients, including clergy, generals, ministers, directors of various large state and commercial structures. And they gave the alleged fraudsters someone 200-300 million rubles, and some 1 billion rubles each. However, for various reasons, they not only do not want to publicize their losses, but also refuse the status of victims.

So far, only the famous ballerina Anastasia Volochkova is among the star victims in this case. Her QBF owes 1.7 million rubles out of the invested 3 million rubles.


On July 31, 2020, Anastasia Volochkova arrived at the QBF office located in the City of Capitals complex (Presnenskaya Embankment, 8, building 1) in Moscow City. There she signed a contract for a period of one year, and a few days later she transferred 2 million rubles to the company's account at 10% per annum. After a while, Timur convinced Mrs. Volochkova to transfer them another 1 million rubles for a period of three months. "For the last three months, I received empty payment orders from QBF without amounts and without any signatures, which alarmed me a bit," says Anastasia Volochkova. As a result, the prima, unlike hundreds of other victims, managed to return not only its million, but also the profit from the deposit - 150 thousand rubles after the agreed period. But no one was in a hurry to return 2 million in August 2021 to Mrs. Volochkova. After the searches that employees of the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs conducted in May this year as part of a criminal case of particularly large fraud (Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), QBF has almost curtailed its work.


"Then I reached the CEO of QBF Stanislav Matyukhin, who promised that the money would be returned to me in parts, and at the same time asked me to use my connections and help them unblock the company's accounts in St. Petersburg and, in my opinion, in Bashkiria. I didn't do it, but 500 thousand rubles were still returned to me," Anastasia Volochkova summed up.


After that, QBF employees stopped contacting the client - Mr. Matyukhin only advised all further questions on the return of the remaining 1.7 million rubles to address the beneficiary of the QBF financial group Roman Shpakov.

It should be noted that QBF LLC ceased its activities on July 8, 2021, after the regulator canceled the license. By that time, some clients were trying to get their money back in civil proceedings. However, as practice shows, it turned out to be very problematic to do so. For example, the CEO of a large online store specializing in the sale of IT and network equipment failed to win the case.


In March 2021, even before the initiation of a criminal case, the businessman tried to recover more than $550 thousand from the defendants, including Roman Shpakov, in the Presnensky District Court of the capital. "During the consideration of the case, I did not find confirmation of the receipt of funds from the plaintiff to any of the defendants," the court decision says. Yesterday it was upheld by the appellate court.




BY MARK SARMATOV ON 10.12.2021 OFFICIALS

Lost the shores. How Volochkova and thousands of Russians tried to make money on shares of American companies, but lost millions

The pursuit of high interest rates often drives Russians into dubious projects, which eventually leave the victims penniless.


However, this could hardly be expected from the "respected company" QBF, which owned a whole range of state licenses and provided brokerage services quite legally. Thousands of customers suffered from the company's actions, including ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, and the total damage from the company's dubious operations is estimated at billions of rubles. Law enforcement agencies are in no hurry to initiate a criminal case, and the company continues to work under the temporary administration from the Central Bank.


Save and multiply

Since 2015, the key rate of the Central Bank has been systematically reduced in Russia - the main indicator affecting the cost of borrowing and the return on investment. After a sharp increase in December 2014, which the regulator went to prevent the collapse of the ruble, the rate for five years dropped 12.75 percentage points and smoothly reached a record 4.25 percent. The business received cheap loans, but it became much more difficult to earn, including for ordinary people, especially against the background of rising inflation, which began last year. In such conditions, Russians began to register en masse on stock exchanges, starting brokerage accounts. And although some of them were opened automatically when registering other products, the results are still impressive: by the end of October, the total number of active accounts reached 24 million, and their owners - 14.5 million (against 3.5 million by the beginning of 2020).


The classic way to make money on the stock exchange is to invest in stock market instruments: stocks and bonds. The former are considered more risky because they do not guarantee profitability, but can bring great benefits due to price growth and successful resale (or, on the contrary, the purchase of a cheaper asset when playing down). Bonds are suitable for those who hope to get a fixed - albeit potentially smaller - profit after a predetermined time. The overall result consists of the price level at the purchase relative to the nominal value (value of the bond at placement) and the coupon rate (percentage). Bonds can be speculated in the same way as shares, but initially they are designed to be held until maturity. The more reliable the issuer who issued the paper, the lower the coupon and the less earnings.


There are alternative ways to invest. For example, derivatives market instruments: futures, options, forwards and swaps. But they assume a high risk associated with the fact that the investor cannot predict the future behavior of the market in advance. Life insurance (investment or savings) and structural products seem to be more reliable and predictable. The first type is developed and sold by insurance companies, the second, as a rule, by banks. Both instruments work on a similar principle: the client's income depends on the quotations of the securities that underlie a particular note. At the same time, the funds deposited are often not invested in specified assets, are used for other purposes and in reality fluctuations in the prices of pre-agreed shares serve as a screen.


In life insurance, income is not guaranteed and depends on the skill of the manager. In addition, during the entire term of the contract, the client remains under insurance protection. Structured products initially contain specific conditions under which their buyer can make a profit, and the coincidence of all of them is often unlikely. The most common option is related to a certain movement of quotations of several securities at once. Such tools are largely similar to a bet in which the client has a known lower chance of success.


Some people like it more

Realizing this, advanced investors who want to earn a little more than on ordinary transactions with stocks and bonds, but are not ready to risk too much, often choose to invest in an IPO. This approach is significantly different from ordinary trading in the secondary market, where the securities of companies that entered the stock exchange some time ago are traded. First, issuers (share companies) receive a preliminary assessment of a limited number of specialists and investors who have managed to submit applications. Secondly, at the time of the start of trading, the value of securities is known in advance, which is not typical of the standard situation, when quotes constantly change under the influence of supply and demand from ordinary traders and large institutional players.

After the start of trading, the price can move in an unpredictable direction - both subside strongly and grow noticeably.


Examples are the online broker Robinhood (one of the most popular mobile applications in the United States), which fell by a record 8.4 percent on the first day of trading, and the Chinese taxi aggregator DiDi, which rose by 13.5 percent. The most recent case is the American manufacturer of electric cars and competitor Tesla Rivian, whose shares rose in price by 29 percent on the first day on the stock exchange.

Shares of electric car manufacturer Rivian rose by 29 percent on the first day of trading

To mitigate fluctuations, IPO organizers usually assign a lock-up period during which the original shareholders cannot get rid of their securities, but this measure does not always help, because it often does not apply to ordinary speculators. Successful investments at the IPO stage can bring a good income, while unsuccessful ones result in losses or force you to keep unattractive assets in the account for a long time.


Window to the stock exchange

Many brokers, Russian and foreign, offer to participate in placements. But in fact, everything turns out to be much more complicated than in theory. Roman is used to considering himself an experienced investor and a person versed in the economy - he had a job in a bank and more than 20 years of experience in exchange operations. However, until recently, he preferred a conservative approach: due to long-term investments in shares of reliable companies, he expected to save for old age. At the end of 2020, the man decided to try out a new method and chose several Russian brokers, opened brokerage accounts. Some of them are well-known - BCS and Freedom Finance (it is traded on the American NASDAQ), but there was also a little-known QB/p>


"I have capital, I have invested in several areas, including through BCS, through Freedom Finance, through this "revest of evil" - QBF," says Roman. - In principle, after a preliminary check was carried out, I deliberately immediately went to QBF with a small part of my invested capital.

When choosing a broker to participate in the IPO, the man was guided by reviews on the Internet and the opinion of the administrator of the Telegram channel Trading Heroes. He was finally convinced by the availability of Central Bank licenses from brokers, including QBF.

QBF office

Roman did not dare to contact foreign intermediaries even though he was going to buy securities of foreign companies on stock exchanges.


"It was important for me to communicate with a living person, a representative of a broker. Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, as I understand it, does not provide such an opportunity, limited to impersonal communication. Plus uncertainty about where the invested funds go - in itself, their physical presence in accounts somewhere abroad was uncomfortable for me," explains Roman. At QBF, he was provided with a personal manager, with whom he managed to quickly establish contact. He claimed that he himself invests through the company he works for.

The investor was not embarrassed by the broker's conditions, without which it was impossible to participate in the IPO: a minimum lot of 350 thousand rubles, the requirement to sign a general agreement for additional cooperation with a third-party company - Q-Broker. "In fact, several structures operated under the QBF brand. The investment company "QBF" and "Q-Broker" were affiliated and were sister to each other, that is, they had one founder and a common parent structure - "QBF Financial Group," says Roman.


There is a nuance

But the main catch concerned the scheme by which customers were offered to work. Having invested funds, they could not count on direct ownership of shares of IPO companies. Instead, they concluded a special type of contract with QBF - a margin option. It differs from the usual, which gives the holder the right (but not the obligation) to buy or sell a certain underlying asset at a pre-agreed price in that it exempts the buyer from paying a premium to the seller (or subscriber) of the option. It is listed gradually as the contract is covered. In addition, along with the fluctuation in the price of the underlying asset, the option holder is charged or debited a variation margin - the difference between the current value and the one fixed in the contract. This mechanism is similar to that used in futures, so margin options are also called futures-type options.


Founder and head of the world's most popular trading application Robinhood Vladimir Tenev

By their nature, they are settlement, not delivery, which means that at the end of their validity period, a settlement takes place between the seller (subscriber) and the holder without transferring the underlying asset. A situation is simulated in which the holder would buy (when owning a call option) an asset at the strike price specified in the contract, and then sell it in the current (spot) market at the current, higher price. The second option involves an imaginary purchase on the spot with a subsequent sale to the subscriber at a higher strike price. It is the difference between the two prices that is paid to the holder as it arises. If the quotes move in an unfavorable direction for it, no calculations are made, and the option simply remains unrealized. In this case, the subscriber keeps the bonus. In the case of QBF, the maximum period of ownership of the option was set at one year. Upon its expiration, the contract was required to close and settle between the parties.


Former QBF client Roman says that he consciously agreed to such a scheme, as he saw it as the only way to participate in the placement of foreign companies. This was claimed by the managers of the investment company, who referred to restrictions for foreigners at the IPO in the United States and other Western countries. Some other Russian brokers work on the same principle, including large Freedom Finance and BCS, with which Roman also cooperated. And in comparison with them, QBF offered more favorable and attractive conditions. The main difference was greater alllocation. In the usual scenario, this is the name of the share of shares from the initial bid, which will eventually go to the investor.


During the IPO, applicants for the securities of the placed company who have submitted applications to brokers or underwriter banks (among them there are both institutional players and private traders) compete with each other. The more people come, the less reason to count on a significant number of shares, because intermediaries need to satisfy a lot of applications. Moreover, by default, larger institutional participants receive an advantage: funds, banks, insurers. In such conditions, most brokers immediately warn that they will be able to provide only a part of what the client has requested, and the client only stipulates the amount that he is willing to spend in the best case. But some promise a better allocation in advance compared to competitors. In the case of QBF, it was not about the shares themselves, allegedly guaranteed to traders, but about marginable options on them.


At the same time, as in most IPOs with real shares, the broker has established a lock-up period - a period during which it is prohibited to sell shares of a company that has just appeared on the stock exchange. Such a measure is necessary in order not to aggravate the already high volatility (volatility) of quotations and to protect investors from losses in the first days or even trading hours. However, usually the ban applies to holders of large packages who also have access to insider (not available to everyone) information: top managers, founders, those who managed to invest in the company in the early stages of existence. QBF applied a three-month lock-up period to all regular customers.


Prolonged cooperation

"For me, the choice was between Freedom Finance and QBF. QBF had a higher allocation plus they gave access to more IPOs," says another former QBF client Alena. Now she acts as the administrator of the chat of investors affected by the actions of the company. "Freedom Finance also has an internal customer rating system. To get more allocation, you need to own the shares of the broker itself and participate in more IPOs, almost indiscriminately. It would take about six months to earn this rating for me at that time. And there was no need to do anything in QBF - all customers were given the same allocation there," says Alyona.


Like Roman, she invested part of the free funds intended for investment in QBF options. The contract with the company detailed the mechanism of work: the investor deposits funds into the brokerage account, after which they are reflected in another account opened with the National Settlement Depository (NSD, a subsidiary of the Moscow Exchange responsible for accounting for the rights of securities holders) to the investment company (IK) QBC. When a client decides to participate in an IPO, he gives an order to transfer part of the money (not less than a minimum lot of 350 thousand rubles) to the IC account in her sister Q-Broker. He, in turn, issues a certain number of options and sells them to the IC, writing off their value from the account opened in his name. The remaining amount is kept in the IC account in Q-Broker. To participate in the next placement, it is necessary to add only the missing funds - up to a minimum lot of 350 thousand rubles or any other amount at the discretion of the client.


The client, on behalf of and at the expense of which the IC operates, does not know until the last, what allocation and how many shares he can count on - clarity will come only when the securities enter the account, and it happens after the start of trading on the stock exchange.

"I began to notice that if the company shows positive dynamics on the first day [the share price is growing compared to the level of placement], QBF gave them a low allocation, just above the one provided by Freedom Finance. If the company was placed at a loss, it was given just a huge allocation - and 70 percent could be "poured". I had about 15 options in my portfolio. And it turned out that one unprofitable transaction took and blocked all the profitability from five small positives," recalls Alena.

Like Roman, she started working with QBF at the very end of 2020 and at first did not plan to stay long:

"I considered participation in an IPO as a short-term hobby - for six months or a year. The peak of IPO popularity came in 2020, and I've already missed it. It was unclear how long it would last, but there was hope for 2021. I decided that I would start, but when the IPO hype calms down, I will close the account and leave."


For the first few months, Alena's financial result fluctuated slightly, staying at about zero. Then there was a small drawdown, but it did not confuse the girl who wrote off the failure on the variability of the market and its low activity on the eve of summer. During the same time, the novel received about 100 thousand rubles of profit. Both of them participated in a large number of IPOs: in 15 and 16 placements, respectively.


On the advice

Transactions were concluded through personal financial advisers, which QBF allocated to clients. Applications for opening or closing options were sent to them in the WhatsApp messenger, and daily reports were sent to e-mail - from addresses registered on the company's servers. Moreover, the letters themselves were uninformative and difficult to understand: unlike most brokers, QBF did not indicate the current value of individual assets and the portfolio as a whole, limited to the list of options, their price at the time of purchase and the balance of funds in the IC "QBF" account with NSD (the balance of free money in the account in "Q-Broker" was not given). The reports, although they were daily, came about two weeks late, so there was no practical meaning in them.


"There were other reports that just showed how a particular paper behaves - growing or falling. They were conducted in Google tables by financial managers (advisers). In reality, they had no legal relationship with QBF, they were listed as employees of completely different organizations," adds Alyona.

In personal conversations, the consultants did not indicate the lack of legal ties with the holding, this became known later and largely by accident.


German IT company Qualtrics, whose IPO was provided by QBF

"For example, when I went to the Qualtrics placement, I wrote to my manager that I was going for 500 thousand rubles. After that, an IPO took place, and then the manager made a newsletter to all participants about how many shares they were "floated" [in accordance with the allocation]. According to his report, I was "poured" 19 percent of the amount of free funds in the account I entered into the IPO. That is, 19 percent of the 500 thousand that I was ready to invest is 95 thousand rubles. And this amount was displayed as the contract amount," explains Roman.

According to him, he nevertheless trusted his adviser and actively discussed with him trading strategies and preferred IPOs.


The first alarm signal came at the end of May, when the reports stopped coming to the post office.

"Customers started asking what had happened. My advisor wrote off everything for some technical problem, for a server failure, but assured that it was about to be fixed. I didn't suspect anything and believed it," Alena recalls.

But a few days later, several media outlets wrote about the searches of QBF offices in Moscow City. It turned out that the employees of the holding are accused of fraud on a particularly large scale: the money attracted from customers was taken offshore.


Dead poultice

By phone, QBF managers assured that the investigation and searches were related to the criminal case of 2016 and were not related to current clients, which means that they could not affect them and their money. According to journalists who gained access to the case file and interviewed old QBF clients, five years ago the company also used a scheme with several legal entities, the difference is that some of them were registered in low-tax jurisdictions: Cyprus, the Cayman Islands and Hong Kong. Sometimes customers were directly offered to invest in Cypriot structures related to QBF. Part of the funds was invested in third-party projects, including those related to real estate.


Some previous clients noted that from time to time they were paid income on deposited funds. According to their assumptions, the funds of new investors could be used for this purpose - the classic design of the financial pyramid. In 2017, QBF changed its head - the position of general director instead of Roman Shpakov, whom the investigation considers the organizer of the offshore mechanism, was Stanislav Matyukhin, who worked for seven years in government agencies: first in the now defunct Federal Financial Markets Service (FFMS), then in the Central Bank as Deputy Head of the Licensing Department of Joint-Stock Investment Funds.


The change of leadership occurred between the period referred to in the criminal case and the emergence of claims from law enforcement agencies.


Former CEO of QBF Stanislav Matyukhin

After the searches in the framework of the case, three top managers of QBF were detained and then arrested: Managing Director Zelimkhan Munayev, who was responsible for the Cyprus branch, Director of the branch network Vladimir Pakhovi, lawyer Evgenia Rossieva. Shpakov, who left Russia, was arrested in absentia. According to the investigation, from the very beginning of work in 2008, QBF relied on attracting wealthy clients who had access to budget funds, not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also in the regions. The company's calculation was probably based on the fact that they did not make their fortunes in a completely legal way, which means that, even if they were deceived, they would not contact the police and the prosecutor's office. Nevertheless, it is on the testimony of clients that the accusatory plot of the case is largely built. One of them, former vice-mayor of Yekaterinburg Ilya Borzenkov, entrusted QBF with about a billion rubles.


Most of the "fresh" clients of the holding, against the background of such news, hurried to get rid - even at a loss - of assets in QBF and terminate relations with the company, but suddenly faced much more difficulties than they could have expected.


"I know that many began to close options without waiting for the end of the lock-up period, through special forward contracts with a loss of 15 percent of the amount of funds invested. I didn't do that - I realized that if the money is really stolen, it doesn't make any sense anymore," says Alena.


But even the closure of the option did not lead to the receipt of money - under the terms of the agreement with QBF, the withdrawal of funds even in a normal situation took several weeks. As a result, by the beginning of June, large sums were stuck in the accounts of most customers.


Late reaction

On June 3, the Central Bank limited QBF's ability to conclude option contracts and attract new customers, on August 8 it revoked all licenses, effectively blocking the work of the holding, and introduced a temporary administration.


"We have filed numerous collective complaints, written many times to the Central Bank, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor General's Office, the FSB, and NAUFOR [National Association of Stock Market Participants]. The Central Bank first responded with excuses, said that we are qualified investors, signed a risk declaration and can apply to the civil court. They also said that our words were not documented," says Alena.


In response, the victims provided evidence of violations. One of the main arguments was the fact that in June, after the introduction of restrictions, QBF transferred free funds from its accounts with NSD to accounts in Q-Broker. No one issued the necessary client orders for this.

"There is a deliberate understatement by the investment company of its obligations to customers to show the Central Bank that they have nothing to do with it, it's all a bad "Q-Broker" does not return money to customers. I didn't have that, but I didn't even have any money in my brokerage account by that time. I had about 70 thousand rubles in my NSD account. Not right away, but they were returned to me. And those free funds that were stored in the account in Q-Broker and intended for participation in the IPO remained there. And they're not even in options. It's just free, unused money," recalls Alena.


Only after providing the supporting documents, the Central Bank became seriously interested in the situation. The regulator instructed QBF to settle its obligations to customers, but, as it turned out later, it concerned only those investors who used other products of the company: they had individual investment accounts (IIA) or trust management accounts. The IPO participants, who accounted for 90 percent of QBF's clientele, were not affected by the order. The rest of the authorities, where the victims applied, are also in a hurry to take action. The FSB forwarded the appeal to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor General's Office referred to the investigation of old criminal cases. The investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who received a statement in mid-July, has not yet given the case.


Meanwhile, the interim administration appointed by the Central Bank in September is also in no hurry to take measures to protect the interests and money of investors. The current head, Yakov Dronov, replied to their requests that he wanted to "analyze everything" and decide how best to act. According to him, there are two options: to submit to the Central Bank a plan to restore the solvency of QBF or to start bankruptcy proceedings. Nor does it exclude filing a lawsuit against Q-Broker or another structure of the holding, but only if the regulator requests it. In informal conversations, Dronov explains that he is afraid to spend money on court fees, as it can be unsusruptible for the IC and drive it into bankruptcy. However, the interim manager of the IC has a dubious reputation. On a special service of the Federal Tax Service, you can find claims against Dronov in previous cases involving him: the courts twice recognized his actions as illegal and not in accordance with the interests of the victims.


Passive assets

The victims consider the Q-Broker trial to be the preferred scenario - along with bankruptcy, but are afraid that the company will delay the process in every possible way.


"In case of bankruptcy, you can roll back transactions over the past three years. It is in their interest to start the procedure as late as possible," says Alena. She raised the same question at the end of August in a personal conversation with Stanislav Matyukhin, who was still the head of QBF: "He said that "there is a very thin matter here, the main thing is not to transfer, otherwise they can go into bankruptcy." To which I replied that we don't mind and that's exactly what we're trying to achieve."


The victims have a Q-Broker statement on the adequacy of the company's property for settlements with customers. It states that the assets are 1.3 times the amount of liabilities. Before his suspension, Matyukhin met with one of the victims and showed him the document, not expecting him to take a picture and send it to other investors (a photo of the statement is available). According to this document, IC funds (own and attracted from clients) are invested in three closed mutual funds (ZPIF), which can be sold only when these funds are closed, and one of them is called "QBF Real Estate". The total value of shares on the balance sheet is 752 million rubles. Q-Broker also owns shares of the Venture Financing Center, an investment company against which 12 enforcement proceedings have been initiated (one is still ongoing). 145.4 million rubles were invested in it.


The Cyprus city of Limassol, where the Purity fund is registered, which is listed on the Q-Broker's asset list

Even more attention should be paid to the loans issued by Q-Broker: 75.8 million rubles to the same "Hunger Financing Center" and 1.2 billion to its own parent company, QBf Financial Group. Also among the assets there are two real estate objects in Moscow for 894.5 million rubles and bonds of the Luxembourg company Argento.


"When we studied her data, we found her legal address. If you drive it into Google maps, you'll see a cute house in Luxembourg, where grandpa picks up mail from the drawer. There's no business center close there. But at the same time, Argento spent 1.16 billion rubles," says Alena.


According to her, the purchase of units of the Cyprus Purity fund for 48.6 million rubles looks like an equally dubious investment:

"They indicated this fund in a letter as of the end of June, but in reality one of the clients went to Cyprus, communicated with a member of its board of directors, and she said that the fund was closed in April. That is, the reliability of the information presented in this letter is also in great doubt. Even with regard to those assets that seem to really exist, questions arise about liquidity."


The total amount of assets listed in the August statement was estimated at 4.7 billion rubles.


Exit one

The prospects for the victims remain unclear, and they themselves understand that they are likely to be able to receive any compensation only in the case of criminal proceedings. Many people do not want to go to the civil court so as not to pay the state duty in vain - it is unlikely to return the remaining money in the accounts, because they are not on the QBF accounts, and the liquidity (the ability to quickly sell without losing value) and the quality of Q-Broker's assets are in question.


The Prosecutor General's Office replied to the request of the editorial office that the agency supervises the investigation of the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which prosecuted employees and the owner (in absentia) of QBF in previous episodes, as well as the seized the property of the defendants in the case. The Central Bank does not reassuring customers and actually admits its impotence in the current situation. In response to the request of the editorial office, the regulator replied that he could only take part in the fate of those clients who built relations directly with IC "QBf" - for example, held an individual investment account there or had a trust management agreement. "At the same time, obligations on transactions with over-the-counter derivative financial instruments are subject to performance by the counterparty [Q-Broker] within the framework of civil law relations," the press service of the Central Bank noted. The regulator has no methods of influencing the sister company. Legally, the victims dealt with Q-Broker, who organized a kind of bet and acted as an opponent in it through an intermediary in the person of QBF.


The Central Bank also points to the high riskiness of derivatives, which was separately spelled out in the contracts. However, risk in the exchange business means the opportunity to incur losses due to unsuccessful investments, but not to lose funds that have not been invested in any assets. Finally, the master agreement with QBF included a requirement to have the status of a qualified investor, which should weed out random people and leave only financially literate. According to the current rules, qualified investors are people who have at least six million rubles in their accounts or specialized work experience and education.


Both Alena and Roman had this status (the latter had it since 1998), but still trusted QBF. The main argument in favor of the company for them was precisely the availability of Central Bank licenses, and now they expect the regulator to provide assistance and work on errors.


"Of course, we would like the Central Bank to join in, conduct an internal investigation and understand how this investment company has been through all inspections for 13 years and has had no significant claims. Two months were enough for us to see all their activities and make sure that it was a withdrawal of funds to affiliated companies and abroad. Everything is simple and obvious there," says Alena. There was no answer to the question of Lenta.ru whether the Central Bank is going to change the procedures for monitoring stock market participants. The press service limited itself to assurances that "information about these activities was sent to law enforcement agencies for appropriate qualifications."


They don't sewn

Meanwhile, the main forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the investigation were thrown into the investigation of old episodes of the criminal case initiated in the spring, relating to 2016 and the withdrawal of client funds to offshore. About 500 people pass through it, including celebrities - for example, ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, who lost 1.7 million rubles. None of them contacted foreign IPOs and invested their savings in more reliable instruments, and therefore they have a chance to return the funds.


"I saw that there is a license [of the Central Bank]. I am a former banker, survived the 2000s, I thought that the story with license recalls and deceived depositors has become a thing of the past, - says Roman, an interlocutor of Lenta.ru. - I constantly heard, read the news about the mega-regulator represented by the Central Bank, that it constantly increases the requirements for market participants, including brokers. This information background eventually played a role. As an investor, a consumer of financial services, I should not think about the reputation of the company and its financial situation at all, if I see a license from the Central Bank. "They participated in all conferences, were a member of NAUFOR, had a rating of the Expert RA agency. They had everything that could be invented in terms of financial merits, ratings and awards," adds Alena.


Freedom Finance investment company, along with QBF, which provides access to foreign IPOs through marginable options

Economists interviewed by the editorial board agree that modern fraudsters have learned to carefully mask their activities and give customers the impression of a solid law-abiding organization. Those who have decided to increase their free funds in the stock market are advised to use proven and understandable financial instruments and not to pursue unbelievably high returns.

"Am likely, the investment company has long turned into a pyramid, the life of which has expired only now. The moral is simple: choose a broker wisely," says Dmitry Machikhin, head of the automated service for working with digital currencies BitNalog. Anton Shabanov, head of the investment products block of Otkritie Broker, agrees with him:

"In this particular case [with QBF], it seems that we are dealing with a scam, and the statements of the company's managers can hardly be called anything but a lie."


IPO of a healthy person

According to Shabanov, it is important to understand that a Russian with the status of a qualified investor can participate in the IPO of any foreign company directly. It is not even necessary to contact foreign brokers and popular mobile services. Many domestic companies provide the opportunity to buy directly securities placed on foreign platforms for the first time. They themselves act through a top-level broker who makes transactions on their behalf and at their expense (actually on behalf and at the expense of their Russian clients). The mechanism is similar to bank settlements: in order to perform transactions in foreign currency, a credit institution must have a correspondent account with the bank of its issuing country.


Contrary to the assurances of QBF managers, most Russian brokers do not have a minimum entry threshold - you can apply for participation in a foreign IPO at least with a thousand rubles in your account, if the price of a particular share allows. The only significant nuance is that the broker can carefully weed out the IPO and provide access to only a small number of the most promising in its opinion.

"Derivative financial instruments, including options, especially margined ones, are something opaque, you need to approach them very carefully and carefully," says Shabanov.


The interlocutors say that they were ready for losses due to market conditions. According to Roman's calculations, at the current stock prices underlying his options, the losses should not have exceeded 300 thousand rubles with an initial investment of 1.2 million. In fact, he managed to return only 2.5 thousand remaining in the account of IC "QBf" in the National Settlement Depository - the rest hung on the accounts of "Q-Broker".


"I want to emphasize that I don't consider myself a speculation. I save money to invest in my future after 50 years. Because no one will give us worthy pensions," he says.


Alyona invested a total of 3.1 million rubles in marginable options issued by Q-Broker.


"If you take my portfolio at the moment, the amount of closed options will be about 2.5 million. My loss from participation in the IPO is about 600 thousand. I managed to return 70 thousand rubles at the very beginning, when my free money was still in the account with NSD. And then in mid-August, another 500 thousand were returned to me through the assignment of my debt," says the girl.


Trade losses did not confuse her and would not be a reason to close the account: "I deliberately took market risk, and I have no one to make claims for it. The only thing is that I am still not satisfied with the allocations from QBF: they were risky, since the company itself did not participate in the IPO and did not distribute the existing shares among customers. Like about a thousand other deceived QBF clients who have lost about 3.5 billion rubles in the amount, they only count on the publicity of their stories in the media and warn against similar mistakes of other investors. Meanwhile, the QBF website is still working and promises potential customers "confidence in their future," although the company has lost its Central Bank licenses. Representatives of the interim administration of the company did not answer the questions of the editorial office.







Roddy BoydAugust 2, 2021


Freedom Holding Corp. has some explaining to do.


The financial services firm has quite improbably become one of the fastest growing companies on the planet. It lists its shares on the Nasdaq, is incorporated in Las Vegas, but for all intents and purposes runs its operations mostly in Kazakhstan.


As a December investigation by the Foundation for Financial Journalism showed, Freedom Holding’s ballooning profits have resulted from baffling and opaque business practices that its management is not keen to discuss.


Among the arrangements is Freedom Holding’s close connection to FFIN Brokerage Services, a Belize-based securities trading firm owned by Timur Turlov. He also is Freedom Holding’s billionaire founder and majority shareholder.


Even the most seasoned investor has probably not witnessed related-partytransactions of the scope of FFIN’s dealings with Freedom Holding.

Last year more than 56 percent of Freedom Holding’s revenue came from FFIN commission payments, and in 2019 they represented over 65 percent. What Freedom Holding does to earn the commissions is not readily apparent, however. Yet the two companies are so intertwined – Freedom Holding’s senior managers use FFIN email accounts – it’s not clear the two companies are separate in any real sense.

In June, Freedom Holding for the first time disclosed in its annual report its relationship with FFIN, categorizing this as a risk factor for investors to weigh before buying shares. Highlighted as a matter of particular interest: the portion of revenue that Freedom Holding received from Turlov’s company. In the annual report, Freedom Holding’s auditor, Salt Lake City’s WSRP LLC, acknowledged the FFIN connection as part of several “critical audit matters.” (Engaged by Freedom Holding to assess the accuracy of its accounting, WSRP did not weigh in on the propriety of Freedom Holding’s FFIN relationship.)

But FFIN’s own annual report, also released in June, ought to give Freedom Holding investors pause: In just a year, FFIN’s assets grew almost 1,100 percent, to more than $2.5 billion. That’s significantly larger than Freedom Holding’s $2 billion in assets.

Were FFIN ever to hit dire financial straits, Freedom Holding could be in real trouble.

And FFIN’s profits have put substantial cash in Turlov’s pockets: $12.8 million in 2019 and more than $30 million last year. (Although FFIN recorded a $16 million loss last year, Freedom Holding’s outside legal advisor Ron Poulton of Salt Lake City explained that no actual loss occurred. The $46.53 million in impaired trade receivables recorded by FFIN were not losses resulting from clients failing to pay but an “accounting convention” to document a charge like a noncash expense such as depreciation, he said.)


Keeping terms of a relationship under wraps

While the specifics of FFIN and Freedom Holding’s arrangement have not been publicly disclosed, the basic contours are clear: FFIN acts as a broker for Freedom Holding, primarily executing trades in popular U.S. exchange-listed equities and initial public offerings.

Peddling IPOs is Freedom Holding’s most aggressively promoted line of business, and FFIN handles the firm’s IPO-related customer service issues. For its part, FFIN has a distinctive business practice: requiring clients to observe a 93-day lockup period for any IPO shares they purchase. Customers cannot sell or even transfer to an outside account the newly purchased shares for that three month period.

This is starkly at odds with the typical U.S. and European brokerage practice, whereby clients are free to trade their shares immediately after receiving an allocation. Any other brokerage that tried to impose this constraint would likely be assured of an immediate customer exodus and a wave of litigation.

The Foundation for Financial Journalism asked Poulton several questions about the particulars of the Freedom Holding-FFIN relationship. (Poulton addressed one group of questions but refused to answer a second, more specific set.) He would speak only generally about FFIN, saying, “The functional purpose of FFIN Brokerage Services to its clients are diverse and private to them.”

Poulton also cited changes in Russian and Kazakh laws that might reduce Freedom Holding’s reliance on FFIN. Turlov set up FFIN in 2014 to offer Russian and Kazakh residents access to U.S. dollar-denominated investments, Poulton said. At the time, Russian regulators frowned on individuals owning British pound- and U.S. dollar-denominated investments. In 2018, however, the two countries started to ease such regulations.


The Foundation for Financial Journalism posed the same questions to Adam Cook, Freedom Holding’s corporate secretary; Askar Tashtitov, Freedom Holding’s president; and Turlov but did not receive a reply.


Generating huge profits via a small Cyprus unit

Notwithstanding the steady skyward march of Freedom Holding’s share price, its financial statements are surely catnip for short sellers and financial skeptics.

Embedded in the filings is the prominent role Freedom Holding’s Cyprus unit plays in the company’s growth. That subsidiary, which used to be the prime component of Freedom Finance Europe Limited, has been formally renamed Freedom Finance Europe Limited; the unit opened in 2017 and its main task is operating Freedom 24, an electronic trading system.

As described in the December article, the Cyprus subsidiary’s defining feature is achieving astronomical profit growth, unrivaled on Wall Street. Although in 2017 the Cyprus unit reported a $30,000 loss, by 2019 it had $33.8 million in earnings. In 2020, the subsidiary’s income rose to $80.4 million.

Freedom Holding’s earnings growth story is entirely a function of its Cyprus subsidiary. One way to track this is to compare the published financial results for both Freedom Holding and its Cyprus subsidiary from Jan. 1, 2020, through Dec. 31, 2020. (The Cyprus unit files a risk disclosure statement once a year that includes its annual net income, but corporate parent Freedom Holding releases its income quarterly and its fiscal year ends on March 31.)


For the nine months that ended Dec. 31, 2020, Freedom Holding reported $90.1 million in net income, with $80.4 million of this derived from the Cyprus subsidiary.

Thus, for nine months of Freedom Holding’s most recent fiscal year, the Cyprus unit contributed at least 56 percent of the parent company’s $142.9 million in net income.

And according to a recent regulatory filing, the Cyprus subsidiary achieved those results with minimal resources. Making that sum of money took only 13 employeesand $6.3 million in capital.

Taken at face value, the Cyprus unit’s gaudy performance likely catapults it to the top of the list of the most profitable trading desks in history. (The distant second: Michael Milken’s high-yield trading operation at Drexel Burnham Lambert, which in 1987 generated a purported $2 billion in revenue, with Milken pocketing an estimated $550 million.)


To an outside observer, the fact that the Cyprus unit could generate profits at this scale is baffling. After all, it is a no-frills online trading operation that facilitates individual investors’ stock trades. It definitely is not an elite proprietary trading division; compensation for its 13 employees last year totaled less than $1.3 million.


Carrying out trades in a circuitous fashion

Freedom Holding employs a remarkably circuitous order execution process for its customer’s trades. It is labyrinth to a degree that suggests that obtaining the best possible price for the client is a secondary concern.

A transaction might look something like this, according to conversations with current and former Freedom Holding clients, as well as a former company executive: A client of Freedom Holding who attempts to buy shares online is promptly directed outside its platform to FFIN, which then routes the order to Freedom Finance Europe in Cyprus. But final execution of the client’s order appears to require another handoff, either to a Freedom Holding subsidiary in Moscow or (frequently) to a firm with a troubling regulatory history, Lek Securities U.K. Limited in London.

One possible reason for this complexity? Fee layering, the practice of charging a client multiple fees on a single transaction.

Layering is a legal, albeit controversial, practice that has fallen out of favor in the U.S. money management industry, given the rise of lower-cost index and exchange-traded fund investing. But for Turlov and his colleagues, elongating a trade’s life cycle in order to collect two or three sets of fees might be tempting since their largely Russian and Kazakh client base might have scant experience with Wall Street practices or robust consumer advocacy.

A further puzzle: The Cyprus unit’s 2020 risk disclosure statement noted that last year FFIN executed 24 percent of the trades made by the unit, up from 9 percent in 2019. This is odd since neither FFIN nor the Cyprus subsidiary hold any U.S. brokerage licenses.

Doing business with companies of questionable repute

One of the nicer things about managing an expanding and profitable company is having options. For example, if a customer poses a reputation risk or is too demanding relative to his or her economic value, ending the relationship is generally a low-risk proposition.

Timur Turlov and his managers do not seem to hold this view, however, because they have regularly done business with people and companies whose extensive legal problems would cause most U.S.-based managers to stop in their tracks.

Consider FFIN’s business relationship with two Moscow-based companies: asset manager QBF LLC and network marketer CityLife.

Both QBF and CityLife have attracted the scrutiny of the Russian government: The Ministry of Internal Affairs raided QBF on May 31 and arrested two of its principals for purportedly conducting a Ponzi scheme. And on June 1, the Central Bank of Russia’s Unfair Trade Practices unit added CityLife to a list of companies with identified signs of illegal activity for allegedly showing signs of running a pyramid scheme.

How does FFIN fit into all this? According to a translation of a Russian language press account of the Interior Ministry’s QBF raid, FFIN was one of several banks and brokerages the asset manager­­­’s executives were said to have used to move investor cash out of Russia. (Neither Turlov nor Freedom Holding were named in the article.)

While using a Russian language search engine, the Foundation for Financial Journalism found a CityLife co-founder’s FFIN wire instructions designating 16 separate bank accounts that were to receive funds. It is not clear who posted such a sensitive document online, but the root link is from a CityLife website. One of the banks listed on the form is Freedom Holding’s Bank Freedom Finance LLC.

Questioned about FFIN’s relationship with QBF and CityLife, Poulton confirmed that the two firms “at one time did have standard client brokerage accounts with FFIN Brokerage Services.” He said that FFIN closed the QBF account “in the fall of 2018” but did not provide a reason.

Poulton added that the CityLife account was opened in early 2021 and “conducted modest trading” and when the Central Bank of Russia added it to its list of companies with identified signs of illegal activity, FFIN closed the account.

Update: This story was updated on Aug. 8, 2021, to clarify the relationship of the Cyprus unit to Freedom Holding’s Freedom Finance Europe; it used to be referred to as its subsidiary but now is simply called Freedom Finance Europe.



Lost the shores. How Volochkova and thousands of Russians tried to make money on shares of American companies but lost millions

The pursuit of high interest rates often drives Russians into dubious projects, which eventually leave the victims penniless.


However, this could hardly be expected from the "respected company" QBF, which owned a whole range of state licenses and provided brokerage services quite legally. Thousands of customers suffered from the company's actions, including ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, and the total damage from the company's dubious operations is estimated at billions of rubles. Law enforcement agencies are in no hurry to initiate a criminal case, and the company continues to work under the temporary administration from the Central Bank.


Save and multiply

Since 2015, the key rate of the Central Bank has been systematically reduced in Russia - the main indicator affecting the cost of borrowing and the return on investment. After a sharp increase in December 2014, which the regulator went to prevent the collapse of the ruble, the rate for five years dropped 12.75 percentage points and smoothly reached a record 4.25 percent. The business received cheap loans, but it became much more difficult to earn, including for ordinary people, especially against the background of rising inflation, which began last year. In such conditions, Russians began to register en masse on stock exchanges, starting brokerage accounts. And although some of them were opened automatically when registering other products, the results are still impressive: by the end of October, the total number of active accounts reached 24 million, and their owners - 14.5 million (against 3.5 million by the beginning of 2020). The classic way to make money on the stock exchange is to invest in stock market instruments: stocks and bonds. The former are considered more risky because they do not guarantee profitability, but can bring great benefits due to price growth and successful resale (or, on the contrary, the purchase of a cheaper asset when playing down). Bonds are suitable for those who hope to get a fixed - albeit potentially smaller - profit after a predetermined time. The overall result consists of the price level at the purchase relative to the nominal value (value of the bond at placement) and the coupon rate (percentage). Bonds can be speculated in the same way as shares, but initially they are designed to be held until maturity. The more reliable the issuer who issued the paper, the lower the coupon and the less earnings.


There are alternative ways to invest. For example, derivatives market instruments: futures, options, forwards and swaps. But they assume a high risk associated with the fact that the investor cannot predict the future behavior of the market in advance. Life insurance (investment or savings) and structural products seem to be more reliable and predictable. The first type is developed and sold by insurance companies, the second, as a rule, by banks. Both instruments work on a similar principle: the client's income depends on the quotations of the securities that underlie a particular note. At the same time, the funds deposited are often not invested in specified assets, are used for other purposes and in reality fluctuations in the prices of pre-agreed shares serve as a screen. In life insurance, income is not guaranteed and depends on the skill of the manager. In addition, during the entire term of the contract, the client remains under insurance protection. Structured products initially contain specific conditions under which their buyer can make a profit, and the coincidence of all of them is often unlikely. The most common option is related to a certain movement of quotations of several securities at once. Such tools are largely similar to a bet in which the client has a known lower chance of success.


Some people like it more

Realizing this, advanced investors who want to earn a little more than on ordinary transactions with stocks and bonds, but are not ready to risk too much, often choose to invest in an IPO. This approach is significantly different from ordinary trading in the secondary market, where the securities of companies that entered the stock exchange some time ago are traded. First, issuers (share companies) receive a preliminary assessment of a limited number of specialists and investors who have managed to submit applications. Secondly, at the time of the start of trading, the value of securities is known in advance, which is not typical of the standard situation, when quotes constantly change under the influence of supply and demand from ordinary traders and large institutional players. After the start of trading, the price can move in an unpredictable direction - both subside strongly and grow noticeably. Examples are the online broker Robinhood (one of the most popular mobile applications in the United States), which fell by a record 8.4 percent on the first day of trading, and the Chinese taxi aggregator DiDi, which rose by 13.5 percent. The most recent case is the American manufacturer of electric cars and competitor Tesla Rivian, whose shares rose in price by 29 percent on the first day on the stock exchange.

Shares of electric car manufacturer Rivian rose by 29 percent on the first day of trading

To mitigate fluctuations, IPO organizers usually assign a lock-up period during which the original shareholders cannot get rid of their securities, but this measure does not always help, because it often does not apply to ordinary speculators. Successful investments at the IPO stage can bring a good income, while unsuccessful ones result in losses or force you to keep unattractive assets in the account for a long time.


Window to the stock exchange

Many brokers, Russian and foreign, offer to participate in placements. But in fact, everything turns out to be much more complicated than in theory. Roman is used to considering himself an experienced investor and a person versed in the economy - he had a job in a bank and more than 20 years of experience in exchange operations. However, until recently, he preferred a conservative approach: due to long-term investments in shares of reliable companies, he expected to save for old age. At the end of 2020, the man decided to try out a new method and chose several Russian brokers, opened brokerage accounts. Some of them are well known - BCS and Freedom Finance (it is traded on the American NASDAQ), but there was also a little-known QBF.


"I have capital, I have invested in several areas, including through BCS, through Freedom Finance, through this "revest of evil" - QBF," says Roman. - In principle, after a preliminary check was carried out, I deliberately immediately went to QBF with a small part of my invested capital.

When choosing a broker to participate in the IPO, the man was guided by reviews on the Internet and the opinion of the administrator of the Telegram channel Trading Heroes. He was finally convinced by the availability of Central Bank licenses from brokers, including QBF.

QBF office


Roman did not dare to contact foreign intermediaries even though he was going to buy securities of foreign companies on stock exchanges.


"It was important for me to communicate with a living person, a representative of a broker. Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, as I understand it, does not provide such an opportunity, limited to impersonal communication. Plus uncertainty about where the invested funds go - in itself, their physical presence in accounts somewhere abroad was uncomfortable for me," explains Roman. At QBF, he was provided with a personal manager, with whom he managed to quickly establish contact. He claimed that he himself invests through the company he works for.

The investor was not embarrassed by the broker's conditions, without which it was impossible to participate in the IPO: a minimum lot of 350 thousand rubles, the requirement to sign a general agreement for additional cooperation with a third-party company - Q-Broker. "In fact, several structures operated under the QBF brand. The investment company "QBF" and "Q-Broker" were affiliated and were sister to each other, that is, they had one founder and a common parent structure - "QBF Financial Group," says Roman.


There is a nuance

But the main catch concerned the scheme by which customers were offered to work. Having invested funds, they could not count on direct ownership of shares of IPO companies. Instead, they concluded a special type of contract with QBF - a margin option. It differs from the usual, which gives the holder the right (but not the obligation) to buy or sell a certain underlying asset at a pre-agreed price in that it exempts the buyer from paying a premium to the seller (or subscriber) of the option. It is listed gradually as the contract is covered. In addition, along with the fluctuation in the price of the underlying asset, the option holder is charged or debited a variation margin - the difference between the current value and the one fixed in the contract. This mechanism is similar to that used in futures, so margin options are also called futures-type options.

Founder and head of the world's most popular trading application Robinhood Vladimir Tenev

By their nature, they are settlement, not delivery, which means that at the end of their validity period, a settlement takes place between the seller (subscriber) and the holder without transferring the underlying asset. A situation is simulated in which the holder would buy (when owning a call option) an asset at the strike price specified in the contract, and then sell it in the current (spot) market at the current, higher price. The second option involves an imaginary purchase on the spot with a subsequent sale to the subscriber at a higher strike price. It is the difference between the two prices that is paid to the holder as it arises. If the quotes move in an unfavorable direction for it, no calculations are made, and the option simply remains unrealized. In this case, the subscriber keeps the bonus. In the case of QBF, the maximum period of ownership of the option was set at one year. Upon its expiration, the contract was required to close and settle between the parties. Former QBF client Roman says that he consciously agreed to such a scheme, as he saw it as the only way to participate in the placement of foreign companies. This was claimed by the managers of the investment company, who referred to restrictions for foreigners at the IPO in the United States and other Western countries. Some other Russian brokers work on the same principle, including large Freedom Finance and BCS, with which Roman also cooperated. And in comparison with them, QBF offered more favorable and attractive conditions. The main difference was greater alllocation. In the usual scenario, this is the name of the share of shares from the initial bid, which will eventually go to the investor.


During the IPO, applicants for the securities of the placed company who have submitted applications to brokers or underwriter banks (among them there are both institutional players and private traders) compete with each other. The more people come, the less reason to count on a significant number of shares, because intermediaries need to satisfy a lot of applications. Moreover, by default, larger institutional participants receive an advantage: funds, banks, insurers. In such conditions, most brokers immediately warn that they will be able to provide only a part of what the client has requested, and the client only stipulates the amount that he is willing to spend in the best case. But some promise a better allocation in advance compared to competitors. In the case of QBF, it was not about the shares themselves, allegedly guaranteed to traders, but about marginable options on them. At the same time, as in most IPOs with real shares, the broker has established a lock-up period - a period during which it is prohibited to sell shares of a company that has just appeared on the stock exchange. Such a measure is necessary in order not to aggravate the already high volatility (volatility) of quotations and to protect investors from losses in the first days or even trading hours. However, usually the ban applies to holders of large packages who also have access to insider (not available to everyone) information: top managers, founders, those who managed to invest in the company in the early stages of existence. QBF applied a three-month lock-up period to all regular customers.


Prolonged cooperation

"For me, the choice was between Freedom Finance and QBF. QBF had a higher allocation plus they gave access to more IPOs," says another former QBF client Alena. Now she acts as the administrator of the chat of investors affected by the actions of the company. "Freedom Finance also has an internal customer rating system. To get more allocation, you need to own the shares of the broker itself and participate in more IPOs, almost indiscriminately. It would take about six months to earn this rating for me at that time. And there was no need to do anything in QBF - all customers were given the same allocation there," says Alyona.


Like Roman, she invested part of the free funds intended for investment in QBF options. The contract with the company detailed the mechanism of work: the investor deposits funds into the brokerage account, after which they are reflected in another account opened with the National Settlement Depository (NSD, a subsidiary of the Moscow Exchange responsible for accounting for the rights of securities holders) to the investment company (IK) QBC. When a client decides to participate in an IPO, he gives an order to transfer part of the money (not less than a minimum lot of 350 thousand rubles) to the IC account in her sister Q-Broker. He, in turn, issues a certain number of options and sells them to the IC, writing off their value from the account opened in his name. The remaining amount is kept in the IC account in Q-Broker. To participate in the next placement, it is necessary to add only the missing funds - up to a minimum lot of 350 thousand rubles or any other amount at the discretion of the client.


The client, on behalf of and at the expense of which the IC operates, does not know until the last, what allocation and how many shares he can count on - clarity will come only when the securities enter the account, and it happens after the start of trading on the stock exchange.

"I began to notice that if the company shows positive dynamics on the first day [the share price is growing compared to the level of placement], QBF gave them a low allocation, just above the one provided by Freedom Finance. If the company was placed at a loss, it was given just a huge allocation - and 70 percent could be "poured". I had about 15 options in my portfolio. And it turned out that one unprofitable transaction took and blocked all the profitability from five small positives," recalls Alena.


Like Roman, she started working with QBF at the very end of 2020 and at first did not plan to stay long:

"I considered participation in an IPO as a short-term hobby - for six months or a year. The peak of IPO popularity came in 2020, and I've already missed it. It was unclear how long it would last, but there was hope for 2021. I decided that I would start, but when the IPO hype calms down, I will close the account and leave."


For the first few months, Alena's financial result fluctuated slightly, staying at about zero. Then there was a small drawdown, but it did not confuse the girl who wrote off the failure on the variability of the market and its low activity on the eve of summer. During the same time, the novel received about 100 thousand rubles of profit. Both of them participated in a large number of IPOs: in 15 and 16 placements, respectively.


On the advice

Transactions were concluded through personal financial advisers, which QBF allocated to clients. Applications for opening or closing options were sent to them in the WhatsApp messenger, and daily reports were sent to e-mail - from addresses registered on the company's servers. Moreover, the letters themselves were uninformative and difficult to understand: unlike most brokers, QBF did not indicate the current value of individual assets and the portfolio as a whole, limited to the list of options, their price at the time of purchase and the balance of funds in the IC "QBF" account with NSD (the balance of free money in the account in "Q-Broker" was not given). The reports, although they were daily, came about two weeks late, so there was no practical meaning in them.


"There were other reports that just showed how a particular paper behaves - growing or falling. They were conducted in Google tables by financial managers (advisers). In reality, they had no legal relationship with QBF, they were listed as employees of completely different organizations," adds Alyona.

In personal conversations, the consultants did not indicate the lack of legal ties with the holding, this became known later and largely by accident.


"For example, when I went to the Qualtrics placement, I wrote to my manager that I was going for 500 thousand rubles. After that, there was an IPO, and then the manager gave all participants a newsletter about how many shares they had "floated" [in accordance with the allocation]. According to his report, I was "fed" 19 percent of the amount of free funds in the account I entered the IPO. That is, 19 percent of the 500 thousand that I was ready to invest is 95 thousand rubles. And this amount was displayed as the contract amount," explains Roman.

According to him, he nevertheless trusted his adviser and actively discussed with him trading strategies and preferred IPOs. The first alarm signal came at the end of May, when the reports stopped coming to the post office.

"Customers started asking what had happened. My advisor wrote off everything for some technical problem, for a server failure, but assured that it was about to be fixed. I didn't suspect anything and believed it," Alena recalls.

But a few days later, several media outlets wrote about the searches of QBF offices in Moscow City. It turned out that the employees of the holding are accused of fraud on a particularly large scale: the money attracted from customers was taken offshore.


Dead poultice

By phone, QBF managers assured that the investigation and searches were related to the criminal case of 2016 and were not related to current clients, which means that they could not affect them and their money. According to journalists who gained access to the case file and interviewed old QBF clients, five years ago the company also used a scheme with several legal entities, the difference is that some of them were registered in low-tax jurisdictions: Cyprus, the Cayman Islands and Hong Kong. Sometimes customers were directly offered to invest in Cypriot structures related to QBF. Part of the funds was invested in third-party projects, including those related to real estate. Some previous clients noted that from time to time they were paid income on deposited funds. According to their assumptions, the funds of new investors could be used for this purpose - the classic design of the financial pyramid. In 2017, QBF changed its head - the position of general director instead of Roman Shpakov, whom the investigation considers the organizer of the offshore mechanism, was Stanislav Matyukhin, who worked for seven years in government agencies: first in the now defunct Federal Financial Markets Service (FFMS), then in the Central Bank as Deputy Head of the Licensing Department of Joint-Stock Investment Funds. The change of leadership occurred between the period referred to in the criminal case and the emergence of claims from law enforcement agencies.


Former CEO of QBF Stanislav Matyukhin

After the searches in the framework of the case, three top managers of QBF were detained and then arrested: Managing Director Zelimkhan Munayev, who was responsible for the Cyprus branch, Director of the branch network Vladimir Pakhovi, lawyer Evgenia Rossieva. Shpakov, who left Russia, was arrested in absentia. According to the investigation, from the very beginning of work in 2008, QBF relied on attracting wealthy clients who had access to budget funds, not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also in the regions. The company's calculation was probably based on the fact that they did not make their fortunes in a completely legal way, which means that, even if they were deceived, they would not contact the police and the prosecutor's office. Nevertheless, it is on the testimony of clients that the accusatory plot of the case is largely built. One of them, former vice-mayor of Yekaterinburg Ilya Borzenkov, entrusted QBF with about a billion rubles. Most of the "fresh" clients of the holding, against the background of such news, hurried to get rid - even at a loss - of assets in QBF and terminate relations with the company, but suddenly faced much more difficulties than they could have expected.

"I know that many began to close options without waiting for the end of the lock-up period, through special forward contracts with a loss of 15 percent of the amount of funds invested. I didn't do that - I realized that if the money is really stolen, it doesn't make any sense anymore," says Alena.

But even the closure of the option did not lead to the receipt of money - under the terms of the agreement with QBF, the withdrawal of funds even in a normal situation took several weeks. As a result, by the beginning of June, large sums were stuck in the accounts of most customers.


Late reaction

On June 3, the Central Bank limited QBF's ability to conclude option contracts and attract new customers, on August 8 it revoked all licenses, effectively blocking the work of the holding, and introduced a temporary administration.

"We have filed numerous collective complaints, written many times to the Central Bank, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor General's Office, the FSB, and NAUFOR [National Association of Stock Market Participants]. The Central Bank first responded with excuses, said that we are qualified investors, signed a risk declaration and can apply to the civil court. They also said that our words were not documented," says Alena.

In response, the victims provided evidence of violations. One of the main arguments was the fact that in June, after the introduction of restrictions, QBF transferred free funds from its accounts with NSD to accounts in Q-Broker. No one issued the necessary client orders for this.

"There is a deliberate understatement by the investment company of its obligations to clients in order to show the Central Bank that they have nothing to do with it, it's all a bad "Q-Broker" does not return money to customers. I didn't have that, but I didn't even have any money in my brokerage account by that time. I had about 70 thousand rubles in my NSD account. Not right away, but they were returned to me. And those free funds that were stored in the Q-Broker account and intended for participation in the IPO remained there. And they're not even in options. It's just free, unused money," recalls Alena.


Only after providing the supporting documents, the Central Bank became seriously interested in the situation. The regulator instructed QBF to settle its obligations to customers, but, as it turned out later, it concerned only those investors who used other products of the company: they had individual investment accounts (IIA) or trust management accounts. The IPO participants, who accounted for 90 percent of QBF's clientele, were not affected by the order. The rest of the authorities, where the victims applied, are also in a hurry to take action. The FSB forwarded the appeal to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor General's Office referred to the investigation of old criminal cases. The investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who received a statement in mid-July, has not yet given the case. Meanwhile, the interim administration appointed by the Central Bank in September is also in no hurry to take measures to protect the interests and money of investors. The current head, Yakov Dronov, replied to their requests that he wanted to "analyze everything" and decide how best to act. According to him, there are two options: to submit to the Central Bank a plan to restore the solvency of QBF or to start bankruptcy proceedings. Nor does it exclude filing a lawsuit against Q-Broker or another structure of the holding, but only if the regulator requests it. In informal conversations, Dronov explains that he is afraid to spend money on court fees, as it can be unsusruptible for the IC and drive it into bankruptcy. However, the interim manager of the IC has a dubious reputation. On a special service of the Federal Tax Service, you can find claims against Dronov in previous cases involving him: the courts twice recognized his actions as illegal and not in accordance with the interests of the victims.


Passive assets

The victims consider the Q-Broker trial to be the preferred scenario - along with bankruptcy, but are afraid that the company will delay the process in every possible way.

"In case of bankruptcy, you can roll back transactions over the past three years. It is in their interest to start the procedure as late as possible," says Alena. She raised the same question at the end of August in a personal conversation with Stanislav Matyukhin, who was still the head of QBF: "He said that "there is a very thin matter here, the main thing is not to transfer, otherwise they can go into bankruptcy." To which I replied that we don't mind and that's exactly what we're trying to achieve."

The victims have a Q-Broker statement on the adequacy of the company's property for settlements with customers. It states that the assets are 1.3 times the amount of liabilities. Before his suspension, Matyukhin met with one of the victims and showed him the document, not expecting him to take a picture and send it to other investors (a photo of the statement is available). According to this document, IC funds (own and attracted from clients) are invested in three closed mutual funds (ZPIF), which can be sold only when these funds are closed, and one of them is called "QBF Real Estate". The total value of shares on the balance sheet is 752 million rubles. Q-Broker also owns shares of the Venture Financing Center, an investment company against which 12 enforcement proceedings have been initiated (one is still ongoing). 145.4 million rubles were invested in it.

The Cyprus city of Limassol, where the Purity fund is registered, which is listed on the Q-Broker's asset list

Even more attention should be paid to the loans issued by Q-Broker: 75.8 million rubles to the same "Hunger Financing Center" and 1.2 billion to its own parent company, QBf Financial Group. Also among the assets there are two real estate objects in Moscow for 894.5 million rubles and bonds of the Luxembourg company Argento.

"When we studied her data, we found her legal address. If you drive it into Google maps, you'll see a cute house in Luxembourg, where grandpa picks up mail from the drawer. There's no business center close there. But at the same time, Argento spent 1.16 billion rubles," says Alena.

According to her, the purchase of units of the Cyprus Purity fund for 48.6 million rubles looks like an equally dubious investment:

"They indicated this fund in a letter as of the end of June, but in reality one of the clients went to Cyprus, communicated with a member of its board of directors, and she said that the fund was closed in April. That is, the reliability of the information presented in this letter is also in great doubt. Even with regard to those assets that seem to really exist, questions arise about liquidity."

The total amount of assets listed in the August statement was estimated at 4.7 billion rubles.

Exit one

The prospects for the victims remain unclear, and they themselves understand that they are likely to be able to receive any compensation only in the case of criminal proceedings. Many people do not want to go to the civil court so as not to pay the state duty in vain - it is unlikely to return the remaining money in the accounts, because they are not on the QBF accounts, and the liquidity (the ability to quickly sell without losing value) and the quality of Q-Broker's assets are in question. The Prosecutor General's Office replied to the request of the editorial office that the agency supervises the investigation of the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which prosecuted employees and the owner (in absentia) of QBF in previous episodes, as well as the seized the property of the defendants in the case. The Central Bank does not reassuring customers and actually admits its impotence in the current situation. In response to the request of the editorial office, the regulator replied that he could only take part in the fate of those clients who built relations directly with IC "QBf" - for example, held an individual investment account there or had a trust management agreement. "At the same time, obligations on transactions with over-the-counter derivative financial instruments are subject to performance by the counterparty [Q-Broker] within the framework of civil law relations," the press service of the Central Bank noted. The regulator has no methods of influencing the sister company. Legally, the victims dealt with Q-Broker, who organized a kind of bet and acted as an opponent in it through an intermediary in the person of QBF.


The Central Bank also points to the high riskiness of derivatives, which was separately spelled out in the contracts. However, risk in the exchange business means the opportunity to incur losses due to unsuccessful investments, but not to lose funds that have not been invested in any assets. Finally, the master agreement with QBF included a requirement to have the status of a qualified investor, which should weed out random people and leave only financially literate. According to the current rules, qualified investors are people who have at least six million rubles in their accounts or specialized work experience and education. Both Alena and Roman had this status (the latter had it since 1998), but still trusted QBF. The main argument in favor of the company for them was precisely the availability of Central Bank licenses, and now they expect the regulator to provide assistance and work on errors.

"Of course, we would like the Central Bank to join in, conduct an internal investigation and understand how this investment company has been through all inspections for 13 years and has had no significant claims. Two months were enough for us to see all their activities and make sure that it was a withdrawal of funds to affiliated companies and abroad. Everything is simple and obvious there," says Alena. There was no answer to the question of Lenta.ru whether the Central Bank is going to change the procedures for monitoring stock market participants. The press service limited itself to assurances that "information about these activities was sent to law enforcement agencies for appropriate qualifications."

They don't sewn

Meanwhile, the main forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the investigation were thrown into the investigation of old episodes of the criminal case initiated in the spring, relating to 2016 and the withdrawal of client funds to offshore. About 500 people pass through it, including celebrities - for example, ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, who lost 1.7 million rubles. None of them contacted foreign IPOs and invested their savings in more reliable instruments, and therefore they have a chance to return the funds.

"I saw that there is a license [of the Central Bank]. I am a former banker, survived the 2000s, I thought that the story with license recalls and deceived depositors has become a thing of the past, - says Roman, an interlocutor of Lenta.ru. - I constantly heard, read the news about the mega-regulator represented by the Central Bank, that it constantly increases the requirements for market participants, including brokers. This information background eventually played a role. As an investor, a consumer of financial services, I should not think about the reputation of the company and its financial situation at all, if I see a license from the Central Bank. "They participated in all conferences, were a member of NAUFOR, had a rating of the Expert RA agency. They had everything that could be invented in terms of financial merits, ratings and awards," adds Alena.


Freedom Finance investment company, along with QBF, which provides access to foreign IPOs through marginable options

Economists interviewed by the editorial board agree that modern fraudsters have learned to carefully mask their activities and give customers the impression of a solid law-abiding organization. Those who have decided to increase their free funds in the stock market are advised to use proven and understandable financial instruments and not to pursue unbelievably high returns. "Am likely, the investment company has long turned into a pyramid, the life of which has expired only now. The moral is simple: choose a broker wisely," says Dmitry Machikhin, head of the automated service for working with digital currencies BitNalog. Anton Shabanov, head of the investment products block of Otkritie Broker, agrees with him:

"In this particular case [with QBF], it seems that we are dealing with a scam, and the statements of the company's managers can hardly be called anything but a lie."


IPO of a healthy person

According to Shabanov, it is important to understand that a Russian with the status of a qualified investor can participate in the IPO of any foreign company directly. It is not even necessary to contact foreign brokers and popular mobile services. Many domestic companies provide the opportunity to buy directly securities placed on foreign platforms for the first time. They themselves act through a top-level broker who makes transactions on their behalf and at their expense (actually on behalf and at the expense of their Russian clients). The mechanism is similar to bank settlements: in order to perform transactions in foreign currency, a credit institution must have a correspondent account with the bank of its issuing country. Contrary to the assurances of QBF managers, most Russian brokers do not have a minimum entry threshold - you can apply for participation in a foreign IPO at least with a thousand rubles in your account, if the price of a particular share allows. The only significant nuance is that the broker can carefully weed out the IPO and provide access to only a small number of the most promising in its opinion.


"Derivative financial instruments, including options, especially margined ones, are something opaque, you need to approach them very carefully and carefully," says Shabanov.


The interlocutors say that they were ready for losses due to market conditions. According to Roman's calculations, at the current stock prices underlying his options, the losses should not have exceeded 300 thousand rubles with an initial investment of 1.2 million. In fact, he managed to return only 2.5 thousand remaining in the account of IC "QBf" in the National Settlement Depository - the rest hung on the accounts of "Q-Broker".


"I want to emphasize that I don't consider myself a speculation. I save money to invest in my future after 50 years. Because no one will give us worthy pensions," he says.


Alyona invested a total of 3.1 million rubles in marginable options issued by Q-Broker.


"If you take my portfolio at the moment, the amount of closed options will be about 2.5 million. My loss from participation in the IPO is about 600 thousand. I managed to return 70 thousand rubles at the very beginning, when my free money was still in the account with NSD. And then in mid-August, another 500 thousand were returned to me through the assignment of my debt," says the girl.


Trade losses did not confuse her and would not be a reason to close the account: "I deliberately took market risk, and I have no one to make claims for it. The only thing is that I am still not satisfied with the allocations from QBF: they were risky, since the company itself did not participate in the IPO and did not distribute the existing shares among customers. Like about a thousand other deceived QBF clients who have lost about 3.5 billion rubles in the amount, they only count on the publicity of their stories in the media and warn against similar mistakes of other investors. Meanwhile, the QBF website is still working and promises potential customers "confidence in their future," although the company has lost its Central Bank licenses. Representatives of the interim administration of the company did not answer the questions of the editorial office.


Comments

Rated 0 out of 5 stars.
No ratings yet

Add a rating
bottom of page