London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Oct 03, 2025

Cayman, Curaçao and Cyprus: the hunt for $240m of Russian bank bonds

An owner of a fertiliser company and wine merchant walk into a Russian bank. That may sound like the first line of a below-average joke but in 2017 these two individuals, along with close to 250 other savers, did so and walked out proud owners of $240m of guaranteed loan notes.
As it turns out, the joke was on the investors. And it wasn’t a funny one. Three years later, they are embroiled in a legal battle that stretches across the European continent.

The notes were sold by Promsvyazbank (PSB), a bank founded and owned by billionaire brothers Dmitri and Alexei Ananyev. The securities promised a coupon of more than 5 per cent and carried guarantees from two companies owned by the brothers, who were well regarded in Russian society.

Later in 2017, it all went Pete Tong. After growing concerns about the bank’s stability, the Russian central bank stepped in. It first told PSB to increase its reserves and then put the bank into administration, effectively nationalising it.

The brothers fled Russia — Alexei to the UK and Dmitri to Cyprus. Russian authorities have a warrant for their arrest and have charged them with embezzlement of around $1.6bn and money laundering. Dmitri has said he is the victim of a political plot to take control of the bank. The brothers could not be reached for comment.

Caught up in this unfortunate set of circumstances are the noteholders, who are desperately trying to get their money back. Critical to their case are a rather unusual set of transactions in PSB’s shares, executed just hours before the bank was placed into administration. These transactions, some noteholders allege, were used by the brothers to extract around $1.6bn for themselves just before the central bank took over.

This task, however, is made more difficult by the spaghetti-junction structure of the brothers’ offshore companies.

They each owned a UK-based company — Antracite Investment and Urgula Platinum - which each owned just under half of a Dutch company — Promsvyaz Capital — which owned a majority stake in PSB.

A Cypriot company, Menrela Limited, jointly owned by the brothers held the remaining, tiny stake in the Dutch company. The notes, meanwhile, were guaranteed by the Dutch company and by a company in the Dutch Antilles called Peters International Investment NV, which owned a Cayman company called Peters International (Cayman) that issued the notes. (We’ve linked to the individual companies in case any of our readers want to have a rummage.)

That leaves the noteholders with the perplexing question of where to bring their court case. It also highlights how victims of alleged frauds or financial collapses can struggle to know which countries have jurisdiction in their cases, and which are simply the domicile for yet another layer in the corporate Matryoshka doll.

The first port of call for one group of noteholders was London’s High Court, chosen because it was the domicile of two of the brothers’ companies.

It was initially successful. The High Court granted a freezing order on the brothers assets - which the noteholders said included ski chalets in Megeve, France and two Bombardier Challenger corporate jets — in July 2018. The order was lifted several weeks later when Dmitri paid the frozen amount to the court. But in September last year a judge decided England was not the correct jurisdiction and ordered the money to be repaid to Dmitri.

With courts in the Dutch Antilles, the Cayman Islands and Russia all looking less enticing and/or too expensive, the group of noteholders are now trying their luck in Amsterdam. Two directors of the Dutch company — Katalin Rozsnyai and Wolfgang Ijsbrand Out — are Dutch citizens. The hope is if the noteholders can get hold of documents showing the directors acted on the orders of the brothers, they can go back to the High Court in London and ask it to reconsider the freezing order.

Ms Rozsnyai did not respond to a request for comment. Mr Out could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, the scandal is becoming increasingly international. A member of Germany’s Bundestag has written to authorities in Cyprus, as well as to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel and the National Crime Agency, as he says some German and US citizens are also victims. A second member of the Bundestag has written to the European Banking Authority.

The two German MPs, who call the brothers actions a “fraud”, say the “increased internationality” of frauds “leaves national legal systems unable to cope with such cases” and are calling for more international co-operation.

In an increasingly fractured world, that looks unlikely.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
Nvidia Pledges Up to $100 Billion Investment in OpenAI to Power Massive AI Data Center Build-Out
U.S. Signals ‘Large and Forceful’ Support for Argentina Amid Market Turmoil
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
Vietnam Faces Up to $25 Billion Export Loss as U.S. Tariffs Bite
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Indonesia Court Upholds Military Law Amid Concerns Over Expanded Civilian Role
Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch Join Trump-Backed Bid to Take Over TikTok
Trump and Musk Reunite Publicly for First Time Since Fallout at Kirk Memorial
Vietnam Closes 86 Million Untouched Bank Accounts Over Biometric ID Rules
×